While the course of subbing at the old high school has gotten progressively less odd, I did have a bit of a deja vu moment getting to do something I'd not done before this year: lunch duty.

The concept is simple: monitor lunch to prevent food fights and other threats to democracy. I had duty for the first and third lunch periods, getting to avoid the dreaded middle school lunch (which I did catch for the last five minutes, at least four minutes more than necessary).

To be honest, I didn't do much. While I wasn't one for aimless roaming, I often wanted to use part of my lunch for other purposes but was not allowed access to the parts of the school needed for such purposes. So when students asked to go somewhere with whatever issue sprung into their heads, I tended to let them go. My apologies to any teachers whose classes were disrupted. On the plus side, a few students said they were going to their locker and actually came back to the cafeteria.

The afternoon announcements, unusually, included a run-down of all the students in detention. A common practice in my day, it doesn't happen usually now (damaging to the student's self-esteem or the like, I imagine). When I was a student, we had one teacher who, if a certain student's name was read off as being in detention, would have his entire class cheer. Given that he was in detention a good three days out of five each week (at least it seemed that way), it was notable when you were in the library and didn't hear a cheer during announcements.