Breakfast for Everyone

How many of us have ever been truly hungry?  I mean, the kind of hungry where you haven't eaten since yesterday and will probably only eat Top Ramen tonight.  The kind of hungry where your stomach burns, and your legs are shaking, and you feel weak and just lay around.  The kind of hungry where you will eat anything for breakfast...grapefruit on neighborhood trees, a can of green beans from the back of the cabinet, leftover dill pickle juice.

When people think of hunger, they usually picture children with wasting bodies from Ethiopia.  However, with our nation's increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots, there are many hungry children right in your own back yard.  For all that we think it doesn't happen, millions of children in our own country go to bed with empty tummies every day.

My new student Joey comes from a troubled family.  He's one of 13 other kids, and I guess mom is on her own and isn't doing well.  Forget that Joey comes to school every day in the same size 14 shorts, held onto his grubby 6-year-old body with an old shoelace.  Forget that Joey has fluff stuck in his curly hair that has been there for 3 days.  The thing you should see when you look at Joey are the dark shadows under his eyes,  and the tightness of the skin across his cheeks.  You should notice that his eyelids droop, and his smiles are slow to come.  You should notice him watching me eat my breakfast yogurt.

On his third day in my class, with unshed tears in his eyes, Joey came to me and told me his tummy hurt.  "What did you eat today?" I asked.  "I didn't eat nothing," he whispered.  When I asked him if he just forgot, he said that there wasn't enough cereal for him.  I told him he could come eat at school in the mornings, and he said, "I don't have no dollars for that." I gave him one of Jaden's juice boxes and the banana from my lunch.  I came to find out that Joey never ate breakfast, and had meager dinners.  Joey ate my lunch banana every day that week while we waited for his free lunch form to be processed. 

I don't know what's up with his family, but when Joey started getting daily breakfast and lunch, the shadows around his eyes began to fade.  His smiles began to come quicker.  He began to lift his head up during teaching. Judge his mom however you like...I certainly do.  But don't begrudge Joey, who is just a little 6-year-old boy whose tummy no longer aches with hunger.  Everyone...everyone... deserves to eat.  

Today I am thankful for the Federal Free Lunch Program.