The Great Upper Allen Elementary School Black Olive Revolution of 1967 (1875 hits)
Category: HumorRating: 1.43 on 10 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <popo@DIE_SPAMMERS_DIEusa.com> (View user info) at 2003-11-22 13:12:35 EST
I grew up in small-town suburbia, and went to good schools which were populated mostly by white kids like myself, from a wide range of economic backgrounds. Imagine a mid-1960's version of the family from Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story" and the neighborhood they lived in and you'll have a pretty good picture.
I was a precocious and rambunctious 3rd-grader, and in my elementary school, our school lunches were served on white ironstone plates and bowls, with real stainless steel flatware, all carried on brown melamine trays. We had actual glasses of milk, not cartons. They didn't coddle us with low-fat or chocolate milk in those days; it was white, whole milk. And—now get this—real cloth napkins that we were instructed to open and place on our laps. Try to find any school in America that does that sort of thing these days. After we finished eating we had to wait for a teacher to come around and inspect our plates to see that we did a decent job of finishing our meal; then we'd be tapped gently on the head indicating that we could get up from the table to go leave for recess.
As we filed out of the cafeteria, it was our duty to march up to the dishwashing area, scrape what was left on our plates into a trash-can that was set into a stainless steel work table, throw our utensils into a dishpan full of hot soapy water and stack our plates and bowls next to them. It was a routine we were quick about, because we wanted to get out to the playground.
I—and most of the kids, I'm sure—actually quite liked the school lunches. They were tasty, well-prepared, and the portions were always generous enough to fuel us through the rest of the day. But there was one thing that year, one item on the menu that was so unspeakably horrible that it took me almost 3 decades to finally get used to even seeing them, let alone eating and enjoying them:
BLACK OLIVES. The ones so big that we kids could only imagine that they were the rotting eyeballs of some mysterious sea creature from 5000 ft down. To every kid in the cafeteria these things were only good for scaring girls when poked onto the end of the boys' waggling fingers or as slingshot ammo. Somehow—I'm thinking the school district was, ummm....compelled...to use them because *somebody* got a great deal on truckloads of them—we had a pile of these contemptible monster-nuts on our plates every damn day. NOBODY liked them, and we complained to every teacher and hair-netted cafeteria lady within earshot. They didn't listen. For weeks, we complained, and for weeks, we continued to get them at every lunchtime.
One afternoon a bunch of us kids were out on the playground after lunch, and we were talking about how much we hated those damned black olives. And we yelled even louder about the fact that they didn't listen to us when we said we hated them.
A large and defing part of my character may have been born this very day out on that cold November playground, because I came up with a diabolical plan. I told all of my classmates—starting the next day, after being tapped on the head to be excused from the table— to start dumping their knives, forks and spoons into the trashcan when they scraped off their plates, rather than throwing them into the dishpan. Then as they walked out past the cafeteria lady, to proclaim—loudly—that they *hated* black olives. To my amazement, word spread of this dastardly plan, and in 2 days, almost the entire population of kids—500 or so, from 1st through 6th grades—were dumping their utensils in the garbage can and telling a horrified and nonplussed lunch lady that they hated black olives.
It took about a week, but they finally put two and two together. I suppose digging all that flatware out of the garbage made them understand that we were dead serious. We didn't want those goddamned black olives.
Before the following week was over, those nasty-ass, government-issue, cheap-as-hell no-kid-likes-'em black olives mysteriously vanished from our lunch trays, never to be seen again.
And nobody ever ratted me out for starting the whole Upper Allen Elementary School Black Olive Revolution of 1967.
User Reviews
Submitted by Confuzitron (user info) at 2005-08-18 13:13:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OLD POST! WHOO!
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2003-11-23 03:59:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
you have put me off olives
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2003-11-23 02:20:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent.
I hate olives! no matter the color.
Submitted by MirrorManMereMan (user info) at 2003-11-22 16:44:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
New to the site, but I think it's a pisser we can't format bold, italic and underlined text in our submissions. What time is it—March, 1947?
Gee, lemme guess: I'm about the 1024th person to complain about that.
Submitted by LaNa (user info) at 2003-11-22 16:03:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish my friend John could read this story... he's always hellbent on black olives on pizza and he thinks that IM the weird one for not liking them.
I feel better knowing that I'm not the only one against the black olive.
*keep up the good fight!*
~LaNa :)
Submitted by Electro (user info) at 2003-11-22 15:47:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Hell Yeah man! I wish I was there to help join in on the asskicking!
Submitted by MirrorManMereMan (user info) at 2003-11-22 14:07:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Upper Allen is a suburb of Everytown USA.
Submitted by AlwaysAnEagle (user info) at 2003-11-22 14:07:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Well written!
Submitted by streetpunk (user info) at 2003-11-22 13:45:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
What is Allen a suburb of?
Submitted by cshape (user info) at 2003-11-22 13:14:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
cackles