Story #5: Lunch With the Grown-Ups

Let me say this: Recent events aside, I have mostly only ever been a teacher. This means I've spent a LOT of time with children during the day, and very little time with adults. The adults with whom I do spend time are mostly other teachers, and in a similar situation as me, so even when I do get to see the adults during the day we mostly talk about the children. Or of course there are some days when the few adults that are around get so overstimulated by being with the children all day that we spend the limited time we do have available to be together, such as lunch, hiding in our classrooms with the lights off eating the PB&J we have brought from home since lunch is only 25 or 40 or however many minutes anyway and there's no time to go out anywhere and get food and p.s., we don't even make $60,000 a year generally speaking...so, take-out=less of an option for many reasons.

However on Wednesday my world was rocked because I got to have lunch with (bah dum duuuummmmm....) The! Grown-Ups!!!

Yes indeed, I was in San Francisco for an appointment in the morning--such an adult-oriented appointment that I was wearing a suit, if you must know--and when I was done I sent her text as we had planned to see if she still wanted to meet for lunch. She texted back and said Sure, Great and gave me directions to her office and I went downtown to find her.

Um, okay, so first of all I find her office and it is in a huge building with like a dozen elevators. Not all of the elevators go to all the floors though so I kind of dork out briefly and have to consult the note I have written to myself ON THE BACK OF MY HAND (so not a grown-up thing to do) describing which floor her office is on so I know which elevator to take. I get to the proper floor and it is FAN-CEE and there is a man at the desk and he asks me my name, and then he calls her and tells her I am there and she comes out to get me and WE GET TO INTO THE BACK PART AND SEE HER OFFICE and I am trying hard to not actually let my jaw hang open. There are grown-ups everywhere! They have on headsets and are talking on the phone, they are putting on their coats to go OUT of the office since they have more than 25 minutes for lunch and likely during that time no one will ask them for help opening a Go-gurt, they are going to the bathroom without having to find anyone to be legally responsible for supervising their students because THERE ARE NO STUDENTS ANYWHERE. I am astounded.

We go into her office and I get to sit down on the upholstered chair opposite her desk while she signs something that someone had put into her box (!) and then we go to get lunch. For lunch we walk to a hipster salad place where there is a HUGE list of ingredients and you can design your own combination and also there are pre-designed options with hottt names like the "Cowboy" and the "Disco". Uhh...? She tells me just to tell the saladista what I'd like when it is my turn. So, I do, and he writes it all down on a form, and gets it mostly right, and we go to pay. The cashier consults the little paper the saladista used to write down my order and this is how the cost of my salad gets determined, because different options have different prices, next thing I know my salad is quoted at the price of TWELVE dollars. For a salad! I am horrified but she said she's paying for lunch so I got a $4 lemonade or whatever else too.

Once we are outside and seated at a table I get a chance to look around a little and I see we are in one of those community open spaces so popular in SOMA--there is a fountain and a waterfall and perhaps even koi but I did not see any, there is a zen-like slowly moving sculpture that looks like really huge hoop earrings and yes: there is bamboo. SO much bamboo, growing against the side of the adjacent building to camouflage the concrete and make it look like we are really In Nature. The whole time we eat I check my watch obsessively because surely the bell will ring any moment, or someone will show up and need their coat zipped, or who knows. But, wait...we are with the Grown-Ups! And, here are the top five ways I could tell people around us were indeed adults and not children (or, people who spend all day working with children):

1) Many people wore clothes that appeared to be dry-clean only, since likely they would not have had to consider the possibility of being thrown up on anytime during the day when they made their wardrobe choices in the morning.

2) Almost all the women (and, one or two of the men--I decided they must work at design firms and not i-banking offices) were wearing RIDICULOUSLY high heels, again because the chance of them having to chase down someone who refused to come get into line after recess=probably pretty slim.

3) No one was wearing a backpack full of emergency supplies that they are required to have on their person when leaving their immediate work area, unlike teachers and their JanSports full of epi-pens and inhalers and wet wipes and emergency rations and sunblock and the like.

4) People were actually sitting down and eating instead of carrying their food around and eating while walking and simultaneously making sure people remember the slide is for going DOWN, not UP.

5) No one blew a whistle to get other people's attention, not one single time! Incredible.

And, of course all good things must come to an end so after about an hour and fifteen minutes of relaxed, adult conversation that might have even included profanity at one point (shhh....don't tell!) we walked back to her office. I really wanted to ask if I could come upstairs and use the Grown-Up Bathroom one more time but I was too embarrassed so I just got on BART. The whole experience was so fun! And, so fascinating. I'd need to go to lunch with the grown-ups a few more times (and, have someone buy me more $12 salads or $15 burritos or whatever) so that I could tell for sure but you know, while she and I had a great time, I have to say overall I probably find it more comfortable to have lunch with the children. Most of the time. Not always. Because if I did not have lunch with the children, when would I get to use the entire repertoire of professional vocabulary that I've developed over the past dozen years?

"Sit DOWN, please!"

"You may not use your hands to do that while you are also using your hands to eat."

"Where is your napkin?"

"Before you go play you need to take as many more bites of food as whatever grade you are in."

And...my favorite: "Did you try to open this with your mouth before you handed it to me to open for you? Because I do not like that. Do not do that again, please."

Now, that's a nice lunch, right there.