Lunch shaming

I just learned that "lunch shaming" is a term. Although nowadays it has to do with children whose parents haven't paid for a lunch, the term immediately reminded me of my experience of junior high lunchroom.

I come from a family of tightwads, and I was never part of any social group at school, so when it came time for lunch, and I had a fried egg sandwich and everyone else had the too-expensive school lunch, it didn't bug me. *hand out, palm outward*  I had a book.

The ugly thing was that, although a. the other kids never ate their whole lunch, ever, b. the school administration decided that if you brought a sack lunch or no lunch, you had to sit at the corner table, while 120 other kids sat where they wanted and socialized ... as if we were c. going to eat the other kids lunches or some crap like that. 

It was a completely offensive and condescending rule, and a vivid demonstration of the class-consciousness of the town I lived in.

And the 120 other lunch-eaters swapped food and ignored food and threw it out in the end, like kids do.

In my life, it was just another way to be ostracized; I had developed the hide of a teenaged rhinocerous.