The school bell rings halfway through my science class(my class is split into two halves), signifying another 23-minute lunch period. The halls become absolute chaos as my entire grade rushes to the cafeteria, trying to claim a prime spot in the seemingly endless lunch line for mediocre food.
On the second day of school, tables are established. There are no defined leaders of these tables, they simply sit down with the others, mindlessly, like sheep being herded into a pen. When you sit down, you get a few "What's Ups?"s and a few harmless insults, a ceremony practiced 10 times per lunch. Usually, you can get with 3 people that you actually spend time with out of school, and there is always one or two people that annoy you to the very brink of insanity. The whole show is set up by a network of friends, you sit with your friends, friends of your friends sit with your friends, and so on until the 15 seats are filled, if you didn't get there in time you simply get a couple laughs and are forced to sit at another table.
Then, after everyone has had a couple bites, you launch into a conversation about whatever the table is fascinated in. The jocks talk about the game, the girls gossip (it isn't stereotyping if you know from experience it's true), the nerds(in the nicest way possible) play Magic: the Gathering, and a million other topics buzz around your head. Everyone puts their two cents in, and there is always someone who disagrees. You hear who got together, who broke up, how teachers plan to fail students. Inappropriate jokes are fired, and soon the table is engulfed in the idiotic ideas of teenagers.
If you leave the table for a few seconds, leaving something behind means the destruction of the object. It becomes an impossibility to get the entire table to laugh at the same time. Soon, people walk over to other tables and the entire cafeteria is engulfed into a web of stories, jokes, and whatever else people want to talk about it. Verbal fights break out, rarely leading to punches, as people hold still to their opinions. At the height of commotion the bell tolls, once again meaning the end of lunch. People return to their classrooms and any conversation held is soon forgotten. Our stomachs are filled with food, and our brains with knowledge of the unnecessary. No progress made, lost if anything, but yet another social experiment finished, needing to be done at least 180 times a year.