The Cool Moms

Each year at my daughter's elementary school, the moms are invited to come and eat lunch with their children for a Moms' Day lunch. The cafeteria prepares a special meal and moms send in their paper registration sheets; their RSVP for the event. This was my last Moms' Day Lunch. My daughter is a 6th grader now. Once she moves into Junior High next year, the moms won't be invited to have lunch with their kids anymore. Too bad. We finally wised up.

The 1st and 2nd grade moms haven't gotten the hang of things yet. They come in and file through the lunch line with their babies, loading their special meals onto their cafeteria trays. But make no mistake -- 'special' or not, it is still very much a grade school cafeteria lunch.

By 3rd and 4th grade, you're starting to realize that you can bring your own food and don't have to buy the cafeteria platter. Some moms start to pack a lunch and those moms that are finally coming to the Moms' Day Lunch for the first time look upon them with envy.

But I was a 6th grade Mom. One of the Cool Moms. I'd been through this routine six times and knew the real deal: we could bring fast food. And ALL the 6th grade moms knew that.

The school principal congratulated us all as we stood in the hallway waiting for the 5th grade moms and students to clear out. She said that usually by the time kids reached 6th grade, they didn't want their moms coming and often didn't even tell them about the event. But this year, there were record numbers. I was not surprised at all. As we stood in the hallway, queueing to enter the cafeteria, I think we represented every fast food chain and pizza place within 10 miles of the school. We had McDonalds, Taco Bell, Arby's, Chik-fil-A, Burger King, Subway, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, Penn Station, Wendy's, and every other place you can imagine.

Of course our 6th graders had invited us! We'd brought enough food for our own children and all their friends. After six years of lunches with us, they had us trained.