The Cafeteria Doors

I was dropping my 16-year-old daughter off on her first day at her co-op placement and she was understandably nervous.

As grateful as she was to have found this placement (thanks to a family friend) during the pandemic days of COVID, and as excited as she was for the opportunity, her nerves were jangling – at the terrifying thought of walking into this office all by herself, where no one would know her (save for one individual who may or may not have even arrived for the day), where she would have to introduce herself and then face whatever came next.

Whether the staff would be friendly and welcoming or cold and dismissive, whether the day before her would be an interesting one that would pass quickly or a dull and boring one that would feel endless – she hadn’t a clue. All of it was an unforeseen and unknown variable working itself into a knot of anxiety within the pit of her stomach.

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We were early, and as we sat together in our parked car, I was blindsided by a déjà vu from my past and said as much to her. It was at this point that I realized how truly nervous my daughter was because she sat quietly waiting for me to go on. And so I recalled a moment from my previous life – when I was her age and when on a regular basis I was faced with the gargantuan double doors of my high school cafeteria.

I learned a lot of memorable lessons in high school – important ones that followed me and helped shape my life moving forward. But probably the most important one comes courtesy of my high school cafeteria doors.

The Cafeteria was a large, sunlight square with row upon row of long tables and benches. There was a stage at the far end, floor-to-ceiling windows on the left and doors on the right leading to the kitchen area where you’d line up to buy food and drinks.

Upon entering The Cafeteria from the school foyer, you had to first pass through heavy duty double doors. They took a good shoving to open and were known to thunk closed with ear-splitting reverberation behind you.

I imagine that like most North American high schools in the late 80s/early 90s – you’d find a microcosm representative of the student body seated within that cafeteria at lunch time on any given school day.

There was never a shortage of excitement contained within those four walls: a supreme amount of flirting took place in The Cafeteria – along with the eating of pizza and the drinking of pop; I auditioned for my school’s most anticipated social event of the year – the spring fashion show – on the stage during lunch break. I didn’t make the cut.

One day during Grade 11, several boys from another high school broke into The Cafeteria specifically looking for me and my friends – which may or may not have been somewhat of a minor scandal back in the day. Another time, during Grade 12, a boy threw a grape at my head so I retaliated with a banana peel and long story short, as punishment I had to help the kitchen and custodial staff clean up after lunch break.

But to get to this point in The Cafeteria – to sit with my friends and eat lunch, play cards, gossip, flirt, become involved in a food fight – I first had to navigate my way through those colossal double doors.

Remember – this was back before cell phones. If you weren’t lucky enough to have a friend or two in your class preceding lunch break or didn’t happen to run into a friend in the hallway or at your locker – you didn’t have the luxury of sending a simple text message to find out where they were.

If you didn’t receive a folded-up piece of paper earlier that day – through an intricate and extremely unreliable system of students – a note from one of your friends telling you to meet them somewhere specific – then this could very well  mean a solo entrance into The Cafeteria.

This would entail taking a deep breath and pushing open those heavy double doors and then standing there – momentarily disoriented – while staring into the abyss of swarming tables in the hopes of locating your friends. On a good day, as you stood there temporarily lost and alone, a friend would wave you over or call out to you.

On a bad day, you wouldn’t see a soul you usually hung out with (maybe they were in line buying pizza, maybe they were in detention, maybe your friends had all piled into someone’s car and headed to McDonald’s leaving you behind). In this case, you had a couple of options available to you: you could march over to the section of tables where your friends tended to migrate and ask whoever was sitting there (probably acquaintances) if they knew where your friends were, you could sit with some pals lower on your personal friendship hierarchy or you could make your way to the library instead where you could sit and read quietly.

In my mind, entering The Cafeteria alone, without a healthy buffering of friends at your side, was one of the most intimidating and possibly soul-crushing experiences of my life. The vulnerability of standing there alone, hoping that your friends were already there, with a seat saved for you – is akin to standing naked and shivering in front of a room full of judging teenagers.

In my nostalgia-clouded memory, when those double doors clunked shut behind you, teens stopped what they were doing and examined your every move. It was best not to show weakness, to move with purpose no matter what your instincts told you to do – whether you chose to head to your usual table, or peer into the kitchen line up or even turn around and high tail it back to your locker.

The act of crossing that threshold alone – that was the learning experience. In fact, it didn’t really matter what you did afterward – if you squared your shoulders and stood strong or crumpled and took flight to safety – these actions were secondary. As daunting and intimidating as The Cafeteria experience was, it was facing moments like those head-on that strengthened me – that gave me the confidence I have today to face situations that may not be entirely comfortable.

Shouldering open those doors and facing the sudden and unexpected glare of sunlight is what helped me slowly cultivate the mettle that currently allows me to eat at a restaurant alone or go to the movies on my own or to strike up conversations with random strangers when I’m bored.

With the advent of cellphones, there is undoubtedly more convenience to our day-to-day lives. There is less worry and unknown and more predictability and safety. So how will our kids develop a backbone; learn to face the unknown despite being scared and anxious; and shrug off this despicable snow-flake reputation they have been saddled with?

The answer is: by facing moments like these. My daughter may not have the same heavy duty cafeteria doors to break through as I did – but she was facing something similar: her first day of co-op waiting in the shadows.

When situations like these arise – my advice to teenagers the world over is this: take a deep breath, gather up your strength, focus on the task and get on with it. Push open those doors and face the glaring sunlight of the unknown.

And my advice to parents is this: let them.

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