Feeding Public School Students Is A Small, Good Thing

In “A Small Good Thing,” Raymond Carver tells the story of Ann Weiss, who ordered a birthday cake decorated with a rocket ship and launch pad and laced with her son’s name, Scotty. The baker took her order as a matter of course. She was just another customer to him. When the time to pick up the birthday cake passed, the baker repeatedly called Ann’s phone, leaving voicemails exclaiming, “have you forgotten about Scotty!” He did not know, nor could he, that Scotty was struck by a car the morning of his birthday and later died.

Grief-stricken and enraged, Ann and her husband, Howard, raced to confront the baker for his call, mistakenly interpreting the baker’s message as a taunt or some other evil motive. When they arrived at the bakery, Ann immediately chastised the baker, fist clinched, her face worn with grief and anger: “My son’s dead. . . . He’s dead, you bastard!” The baker immediately felt the pangs of her grief and realized the part his error played in the present moment. He undid his apron, sat Ann and Howard down, cleared a table, and apologized. He served them rolls straight from the oven, and consoled them: “You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this. . . .” He continued his apology, explaining that he had no children, that he has lived a lonely life, living vicariously through other people’s celebrations through his food, but never directly participating in those celebrations. Food has a survival utility—everyone needs it to live. But, the baker focused on its social utility—food brings people together; it creates an opportunity for sociability, which may not be necessary to survival, but it is necessary to living.

         Governor Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 1566, a bill that creates a grace-period for public school students who run out of money in their lunch accounts to continue eating lunch . . . with other students. The bill was designed to curb “lunch shaming”—a label designed to capture the indignity a student feels when, in front of her peers, she is turned away by the cashier for lack of sufficient funds. The grace period is a small thing under the circumstances, and, given the current policies that govern feeding public school students, it is good. Students need food to survive as well as to develop, physically and mentally. Though the grace-period sought to cure two evils, kids going hungry and suffering indignity, it is a short-term solution—at some point the grace-period will end. 

         In the fight to combat hunger and indignity, let us not forget the social utility served in the lunch setting. Eating is a small, good thing that brings students together. We run the risk, like the baker in Raymond Carver’s story, of numbing ourselves to the importance of this small, good thing in students’ lives when we view ourselves merely as facilitators and not participators.