In the early ‘80s at Cutler Junior High, layoffs were looming. I was afraid I’d lose my job, since even after 10 years I was still the junior person in the department.

As it turned out, I didn’t lose my job, but another teacher and I were assigned half time at both Cutler and Fitch Junior High. That meant two trips each day over Fort Hill.

A couple of months after starting this routine, the principal of Fitch asked if I would like to be at that school full time. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance!

It didn’t take long before I once again found myself with cafeteria duty. For me, this was a homecoming of sorts. As an eighth grader at Fitch Junior High in 1960, I had been the cashier for my lunch wave.

I remember one day when a young lady came to the register with her lunch before the kids were all in the lunchroom. I couldn’t tell if she was a mature ninth grader or a young teacher, so I asked her if I should charge adult price or kid price. She smiled, said I was wonderful, and bent over and kissed me on the cheek. That was my answer: adult price.

The demographics at Fitch were somewhat different from Cutler. There were more minority kids. I used to tell my students that some teachers look out at their classroom and they might as well be in a cotton patch because all they see are a lot of little white faces. I told them I was lucky. When I looked out I had a crayon box; I saw every color but green. It was great!

For a couple of years I taught in a classroom across the hall from the cafeteria. I had some Muslim students and I told them that during Ramadan if they wanted to spend the lunch period in my classroom instead of watching all their friends eat, they were more than welcome. They took me up on my offer for a couple of days, but eventually opted to spend the time socializing with their friends.

Once I noticed an eighth grade boy who wasn’t eating. I asked him on Thursday what the matter was and he told me he simply wasn’t hungry. When I saw him without a lunch on Friday, I asked him to come into the hallway.

He shared quite a story. It seems his father had run off with his girlfriend, and the kids’ stepmother didn’t care about them. There was nothing in the house for lunch. I immediately took him up to guidance, and the counselor called DCYS. Their response was they would get on it first thing Monday morning.

As we walked back to the cafeteria, I gave the kid five dollars and told him to go to the convenience store near his house and get some bread and cold cuts so that he and his younger sister could at least have sandwiches over the weekend.

By the time we got back, the next lunch wave had begun. I apologized to Bob for leaving him hanging, and he responded by saying that he knew if I wasn’t there, it must have been important. Later I explained the situation to him. Some kids come to school with a lot more baggage than just their backpack.

I remember one funny incident during a seventh grade lunch period. As I was chatting with the head custodian (another Bob!), a youngster came up to us and said he had spilled his milk. I pointed to the bucket with sudsy water and sponges that the table wipers used after each lunch wave. He went over and returned with a dripping sponge. I told him to wring it out and wipe up the milk. He looked at me as if I had asked him to solve a quadratic equation. He had no idea how to use a sponge!

I asked him who cleaned up at home when he spilled his milk. I remember his reply, “Mommy does,” to which I responded, “Do I look like your mother, kid?”

Our good-natured custodian was trying very hard not to burst out laughing. Eventually, the milk was cleaned up and the lad learned how to use a sponge.

One year Bob was informed that a group of ninth grade boys planned to start a food fight on the last day of lunch service. Normally, the penalty for throwing food in the cafeteria was a three-day suspension, but I guess they figured that on the next to last day of school, nothing would happen. The lunch period started as usual, the kids were fed and were eating, but when the perpetrators looked up, they saw more than just the four cafeteria monitors. About a half dozen other male teachers were standing in the room. It was a very peaceful lunch.

Sometimes I think elementary schools had the right idea; feed them lunch and then send them out to play.

Robert F. Welt of Mystic is a longtime retired history teacher in the Groton Public Schools.