At a recent training seminar in Phoenix I met a coworker for breakfast and ordered my usual breakfast of a bagel and a Diet Coke. My coworker, one of those annoying outdoorsy types, prides himself on eating healthy and he gets uppity about it. He was tucking into a huge bowl of high-fiber cereal and fruit with milk and eyed my breakfast with disdain.
“Diet Coke for breakfast?” he asked. “Dude, at least have a glass of milk.” I shuddered, and told him that I don’t drink milk, which so shocked him he put down his spoon and stared at me. “Why?” he asked.
I’ve hated milk ever since I was a little kid. When I was six I attended a Catholic grade school which was renowned for the rigor of its discipline and the poor quality of its lunches. It was the kind of school where the nuns would beat their students with the wooden rosaries they wore around their waists, and where the Cafeteria Ladies would stay up late to concoct horrid lunches that no child would ever willingly eat.
I always brought lunch from home but one rainy Friday I forgot it. The school rule was that if you forgot your lunch you had to buy one and with pure horror I realized it was Meatless Friday. I still remember the lunch: sardines on toast with Brussels sprouts, stewed tomatoes, milk and, for dessert, prunes. Nauseated, I looked at my lunch and saw it was looking back at me; I walked slowly to my assigned seat under the watchful eye of Mrs. Phister.
Mrs. Phister was the most fearsome of the Cafeteria Ladies. She was about seven feet tall and built like a stevedore. She had had polio as a child and had braces on both legs, so that she clanged when she walked. She wore her iron gray hair pulled tightly into a bun and had thick, black, cats-eye glasses.
Mrs. Phister’s previous job had been as a matron in a woman’s prison where she was fired for abusive behavior towards the inmates. It was a logical career move that her next job was working in a Catholic elementary school.
Each table in the cafeteria was numbered, as were the individual seats at each table, and during lunch Mrs. Phister stood on a raised platform with a megaphone shouting commands: “Table 4, seat 6: Eat your peas.” Or, “Table 3, seat 2, take the straw out of your nose.” If the miscreant in question disobeyed, a nun would sneak up from behind and smack them with her rosary.
Our school had a strict “clean plate policy” so I squeamishly ate the sprouts and choked down the tomatoes, but I could not force myself to eat the sardines, so, inspired, I put them in my milk carton and called it a day. Then I heard Mrs. Phister.
“Table 9, chair 5,” she called, and I froze. “Eat those sardines!” Terrified, I saw Sister Virginella approaching, rosary in hand so I hastily dug the soggy sardines out of my milk carton and, squishing, ate them one by one.
When I was finished, Sister checked my milk carton, looked at Mrs. Phister and shook her head slightly. “Table 9, chair 5,” Mrs. Phister called out triumphantly, “finish your milk!”
Gagging, I drank the warm, fishy milk and somehow managed to keep it down, but I’ve hated milk ever since and as an adult, I never drink the stuff.
My coworker was puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he said “are you lactose intolerant?”
I sighed. “I was after that,” I said.
