dressing for high school.

The fundraiser dinner at my old high school reminded me one of really great thing about my alma mater, and ironically enough, it was something about the food. I lined up with all those other members of the community and went through that same twisting cafeteria line that I once raced to get to at the sound of a bell. I remembered how I used to pass underclassmen mercilessly and kind of regretted being such a jerk. I waited patiently this time, asked for one baked potato and one piece of bread, then proceeded to the drink line, where I opted for Pepsi instead of sweet tea. I was helping myself at the salad bar, getting lettuce and other vegetable items while my mother examined the salad dressing choices. I couldn't see the dressings from where I was, so I asked, "What kind of dressings do they have?" I was really asking, "Do they have that Hidden Valley ranch crap or something I can stomach?" Mama didn't understand the true intent of my question, so she answered, "Italian, ranch, and thousand island."

I finally got to the dressings, and there I saw it: a big squirtable jug of ranch dressing. Then I remembered one of the truly great things about grades nine through twelve - my high school made the best ranch dressing.

We're talking as good as my mother's homemade here. In this world of institutionalized food and canned and processed meats and vegetables, the ranch dressing was the one thing you could count upon. There were always two big canisters of it at lunch sitting on the condiments stand, and if you had second lunch, those canisters were dangerously low. We all abused it. Our lunch trays were those thick plastic kind with partitions, and for most kids, one of those partitions was just for ranch dressing. Tater tots, french fries, even those square pizzas were improved by dipping them into the ranch partition. I won't say that I didn't experiment with ranch dressing and green beans a couple of times. We very rarely even had salad at lunch, but the dressing was always there.

Some lunch lady that works at my school probably makes it. She wears a hairnet, is old, and likely does not make very much. She is referred to by the rest of the staff by Miss and her first name, which is probably some old lady name like Florence or Ruth. Her job, by all accounts, probably kinda sucks. She gets there early to prepare institution food, and then has to stay and clean up after a swarm of ungrateful and messy kids who have no perspective on life at all. But she makes homemade ranch dressing in huge batches for those stupid ingrates, because even a lunch lady can have pride in her job. It comforts me that after five years, she is still there, providing excellent ranch dressing and making school lunch tolerable.

This woman, whoever she is, she probably does not realize how important she is to the school. When she retires, the morale of the entire student body will crumble the day her last batch of ranch dressing runs out. No one will even know why, but everyone will notice a general malaise over the school. No one will think to attribute it to a lack of good ranch dressing.

So lunch lady, I salute you. Thank you for making high school that much better.