They served us, with watery vegetable soup and packs of saltines, a yellow processed stuff in credit card-sized rectangles about a quarter-inch thick. Most of the sophomore guys at my table found more enjoyment playing with the cheese than eating it. We discovered that stabbing the rubbery slices with our straws made neat holes, a plug of the stuff being removed with each stab and finding lodgement in the straw. A series of stabs resulted in a perforated cheese slab that could be collapsed into a ball then pressed into a new, much smaller slab for stabbing. As we stabbed, the straws quickly filled with soft cheese, offering many possibilities. Gripping one end of the straw between thumb and forefinger and using the same fingers on the other hand to pinch and then slide down the length of the straw produced a continuous cylindrical column that could be coiled, shaped, or even intertwined with similar cheese extrusions. Some boys left loosely wound piles of yellow stuff on their trays to resemble miniature mounds of human excrement; others pressed cursive cheese letters on the table tops spelling out the usual sophomore vulgarities. Some discovered creative ways to dangle cheese loops from their nostrils or drape them over their ears. The more diabolical among us, though, eventually grew bored with the whole concept of shaping the extruded cheese and resorted to pinching off small plugs and propelling them from the ends of our spoons. It was only natural to begin shooting them at each other.

The soft plugs made satisfying missiles, and I soon found myself in heated combat with my nemesis, Ricky Lewis, at the other end of the table. We fired, ducked, and reloaded as fast as we could. Our friends, clearly outmatched, dropped out of the competition to become spectators, cheering and clapping for their favorite cheese combatant. Most of the crowd cheered for Ricky, but I had a few staunch supporters. Emboldened by their claps and shouts, we stood at opposite table ends, flinging the cheese plugs at each other as hard as we could. I kept aiming for Ricky’s impishly grinning face; nothing else mattered until I felt a sudden pinch at the base of my neck and heard a high-pitched command of “Stop!” in my ear.

The faculty, we assumed, had become too lethargic to care about our long-running cafeteria misbehavior. Miss Anne Anders, though, was an exception to most established rules. She seemed older than time but somehow ageless. She had been the girls basketball coach for centuries and the gym, already twenty years old by that time, was named for her. With a painful grip on the tenderest part of my trapezius muscle, the tiny woman dragged me away from the table and proceeded to Ricky’s end, where he was subdued in the same way with her other hand. She marched us, reaching up to maintain her grip on our shoulders, to the first place where she could find some privacy.

These were the days before people worried so much about law suits, and public school paddlings were common. The teachers and coaches didn’t bother with procuring witnesses, gaining parental consent, or otherwise doing it properly; they just beat the shit out of us. Before she pushed open the door to the boy’s restroom, Miss Anders shouted, “You better zip it up, ’cause I’m coming in!” I don’t know where the paddle came from; she must have produced it from thin air. Before I knew it, my backside was on fire. She hit me six times before ordering me to take out my billfold. Then she turned to Ricky and hit him six or eight times. When he reflexively squirmed away from the blows, she jerked him back around by a belt loop. She kept going back and forth, whacking my butt then his until we were both nearly in tears. Finally exhausted, she released us, saying only, “Now, go and behave yourselves.” Humiliated, we shuffled back toward the cafeteria. The bell rang to return to class before we got there. The ensuing commotion provided the opportunity for us to regain our composure and tough guy smirks. Soon we were both laughing and replaying the incident to the accolades of our classmates. Ricky and I became the best of friends, engaging in all sorts of reckless behavior over the years, but I don’t think we ever had another cheese straw battle.