Sept. 14, 2005

Welcome to the world of high-stakes trading, where if you don&8217;t hang on to your cookies, they won&8217;t be there when you get back.

The daily rations are simple &8212; one slice of pepperoni pizza, one fruit bowl or salad, one orange, one cookie and one mini-carton of milk.

The young commodity traders exit the mess hall line, rank and file, with more or less the same portions of each.

Five minutes later, it&8217;s a completely different story.

Sixteen years removed from fourth-grade lunchrooms, I was blissfully unaware of the marketplace that had opened up around me Monday around noon.

And in hindsight, I must say I consider myself lucky to have walked away digesting the $3 pizza and cookie I paid for.

I heard brutal war stories of the day Destini Saul tricked her classmate into looking one way while she snatched his chocolate chip cookie right from the tray.

And I watched some true wheeling and dealing that could teach Martha Stewart a thing or two.

Delvon Polk managed to find a non-cookie eater willing to give up her cookie for free. He tried to trade one cookie for one piece of pizza with Deante Ware, but that was a no-go. A slice of pizza is worth two cookies, Deante said.

The price worth paying, Delvon traded two chocolate chip cookies to Deante &8212; a.k.a. the cookie monster &8212; for the pizza.

And this is where he lost me, but next thing I know, Delvon returns from the other end of the table with two more cookies.

All trades exhausted for the day, Delvon ate two pieces of pizza and two cookies, while Deante finished off his favorite, three cookies.

At the end of the table, Ayana Larry was sweet-talking Mrs. Bell to no avail for a bite of the homemade meal the teacher brought from home.

Now, I feel my sensitive taste buds might have kept me out of all the cafeteria fun in school.

For all 13 years I brought my own mom-crafted lunch to school every day. And every day, with very few exceptions, I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a fun-size back of Doritos and some variety of dessert (I lived a little in that category), and I drank an orange Hi-C. In the early years there was a bag of sliced pickles too.

And as far as I can remember, I never traded, borrowed or stole.

I do remember hearing great things about pizza day in the cafeteria, but I was never quite brave enough to step over that edge. Plus the pizza was rectangular, and that didn&8217;t make sense to me.

But now, at age 24, I can officially say I&8217;ve eaten cafeteria food.

And it wasn&8217;t all that bad, though it was expensive, and came in portions smaller than my grown-up stomach.

Come 3 p.m. Monday, I was hungry. So, I went home and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Julie Finley is the education reporter for The Natchez Democrat. She writes a weekly column based on experiences with Marty Tuccio&8217;s homeroom class at McLaurin Elementary. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or

julie.finley@natchezdemocrat.com

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