Stranger in the Lunchroom

 It was 11:00 AM. “No talking in the hallways. And please stand in a single file line,” Mrs. Wagner encouraged her carefree second graders. Some students rushed toward the line to be the first in the cafeteria and get their school lunch. Others swiftly grabbed their lunchboxes out of their cubbies before joining their friends. Meanwhile, I reluctantly paused in front of my cubby, making sure I stalled just enough time so my classmates didn’t notice me too much.

Mrs. Wagner’s class was busy excitedly chatting while I stealthily made my way to the end of the line of students. We obediently strolled into the lunchroom full of children speaking over each other and sat in our designated tables for everyone’s favorite time of the day—lunchtime.

Jessica unzipped her bright purple-colored lunchbox, moved around the reusable ice packs, and revealed her meal: white bread PB&J sandwich, sliced apples, a small bag of Doritos, and a Capri Sun. Brittany ripped her brown paper bag, which contained a Lunchable, Go-gurts, and a Sunny-D. Zach, who had been the first in line for his school lunch, brought his lunch tray organized with four pieces of chicken nuggets, a spoonful of sweet yellow corn, a buttered dinner roll, a fruit cup, and a carton of cold chocolate milk.  

It was inevitable. I silently rummaged through the clear plastic bag encasing a styrofoam food container. With my heart thudding inside my ears, I found a big bag of Welch’s fruit snacks and bottled water. Checking that no one at my table had noticed me yet, I continued to open the foam container. Inside the to-go box lay a plastic condiment cup of ranch dressing embedded in a mountain of green lettuce leaves sprinkled with thinly sliced deli turkey and garlicky croutons. In a matter of seconds, Zach asked, “Whatcha got there?” My peers soon became interested in what I had kept hidden. Immediately, I wanted to turn into a puddle of water and dissipate into the ground. At the tender age of eight, I was not ready to explain why my lunch had a different appearance than theirs. I couldn’t hide my lunch forever. I also couldn’t hide that it was obviously made by my hardworking Korean immigrant mother, who woke up even before the sun was out and carefully packed my lunch at the sandwich shop she worked at. I never had it in me to hurt my mom’s feelings and ask her for something else. I knew she had her hands full. But how I deeply yearned for those “authentic American” lunches that my friends had brought! How I dreaded those moments when the eyes of my friends at my lunch table would fill with curious wonder! I was different. Even with a “western” lunch, it was no secret that I was still “foreign.” In "Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner," Julia Kristeva describes “indifference” as the “foreigner’s shield” (7). That is how I felt then. I didn’t want anyone to see that I was affected by my foreignness. I eagerly traded lunches with my peers who were intrigued by my different lunch items. Perhaps, these types of events were emphasized because I was the only Asian girl in my class and only one out of three other students in the entire school. I was the stranger in the lunchroom. As mentioned by James Baldwin in “Stranger in the Village,” I felt like a “living wonder” at times. Many of the students in my class were unfamiliar with girls like me: I was someone who had a different skin color and who brought lunch that did not fit with the rest of the class. Teju Cole explains “to be a stranger is to be looked at.” In retrospect, that may have been why I hid my lunch. I didn’t want to be a stranger in the room.