hey teacher could you ease my pain

i'm part of this program at work where we read to an elementary school student during our lunch hour. (i will refrain from getting further into it, as god forbid my identity is discovered. then my company will come after me for divulging secrets about my industry and fire my ass. scandal! although, then i will undoubtedly be granted a book deal, so it would probably pay off. actually, i'm lying, it totally wouldn't since having a book deal doesn't at all indicate that one will ever be financially secure. which is probably why authors are such neurotic sorts). anyhoo, so because of this little program i'm involved in, i have access, as an adult, to the NYC public school system. of which i am a proud, multiple time student-of-the-month graduate. but its amazing how different everything is when you're older, wiser, and have developed an appetite for things classier then little debbie snack cakes. (although i still love those nutty bars. http://www.littledebbie.com/products/NuttyBars.asp *swoon* )

so suffice to say, i had a bird's eye view of some school lunches recently. how on earth did we ever eat those things? the pizza made Elio's look positively gourmet and there was some sort of mysterious fruit on the side, which my readee kindly told me he thought tasted like peaches. i understand that its impossible to have high quality food in every school, but the least they can do is find a brand of frozen pizza where the cheese has a better consistency than hardened glue. poor kids. thank goodness i was so fussy that i brought lunches from home until junior high, when the blue-tinged (i kid you not) hotdogs that the annex served were apparently so appetizing that i wound up going over to the dark side of "hot lunch".

speaking of the dark side, aren't ones parents supposed to serve as a good example? yes, that's right, that's what i thought too. well, in recent weeks mine got me completely addicted to "skating with celebrities", to the point where i was truly excited that the championship skate was on last night. (bravo, kristy & lloyd!) what the hell?!? i remember a time when i was only allowed to watch PBS shows after-school. now they've gone and undermined all those years of hard work.