Feeding Their Independence : At Orange County High Schools, the Ritual of Off-Campus Lunching Satisfies a Hunger for More Than Fast Food

Clothing styles, slang and teaching methods might change over the years but, in high school, little else does.

Consider the urge to escape campus at midday--even for just a short while. Students count the final minutes of fourth period until they can dart past the lockers, the administrators and the parking lot to the nearest fast-food joint.

We’re talking freedom, pure and unsupervised, with the chance to chow on anything the taste buds and budget allow.

Hit any such restaurant around the noon hour, and the place is thick with teens. The excuses for leaving never differ: unappetizing victuals from the school kitchen and overcrowding in the cafeteria.

Most of the student body seems to show up, turning the entire scene into one as noisy, pushy and crowded as the school cafeteria. But, hey, it is a scene nonetheless, filled with all the buzz and gossip that comes with the privilege of leaving school for lunch.

A fast-food eatery on a campus doesn’t necessarily ensure students will stay. Even with a Taco Bell at San Clemente High School, several hundred students venture off campus daily to lunch.

Those who don’t hit the deli at Lucky’s market or the neighboring pizza, frozen yogurt or doughnut shops head over to the other side of the campus to McDonald’s.

The freshman football team, dressed in white and red jerseys, storms into the golden arches at 12:05. Minutes later, another slew of students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, cruise in. Some walk away with a brown bag in hand; quite a few find sustenance in a soft vanilla cone; still others fast and just accompany their friends who are eating.

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Freshman Robert Volga just came along with the team because he was supposed to meet someone. He can’t eat because of a big breakfast he had four hours ago and the nerves he’s already experiencing four hours before a game.

The 15-year-old says he’s avoided the cafeteria because he’s heard “the food is not really good.”

“And it’s too expensive,” adds teammate Brandon Reed, 14. “We need the meat and the buns for energy for the games. The food’s tasty. I know it’s not good for you. So I have water and no french fries. Just a regular burger--no fattening cheese.”

No one sits down inside McDonald’s. The surrounding green belt and back brick wall serve as a dining area, with the football players gathering at one end in view of the playing field. At the other sit a dozen stringy-haired “partying” kids who take their burgers with a side of nicotine.

In between wander sophomores Courtney Bloom and Kathy Allen. The duo assumes the visible ‘90s consciousness: they recycle, read, shop at Urban Outfitters and eat french fries. But after too many days of fries, they have been known to crunch on an apple from Lucky’s.

Courtney, 15, explains that there is no single type of person who leaves campus for lunch: popular or loser, artsy or athletic, hungry or not.

“People who drive like to go off,” she says. Seniors and juniors head 10 minutes down the road to Denny’s or Ricardo’s Mexican restaurant, she notes. A driver license and upperclassman status apparently earn some the right to sit down and be waited on. “Some people who smoke go away. We just go so we can walk. There’s not really any big reason to leave.”

Well, actually, there is, according to Kathy, also 15. “We come here to yell at them to pick up their trash,” she says, pointing to the football players. The area where the team once stood appears tidy. But then she takes me behind the wall, where the players have unceremoniously tossed their wrappers and waxed cups.

“When I’m a senior,” says Kathy, “I’m going to ‘trash can’ everyone I see littering.”

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Like most rights earned before we’re 18, doing lunch off-campus generally needs parental approval. Not that everyone who goes off-campus has a pass; its common knowledge that no one really ever checks. But if you get caught, it could mean detention.

So Mom or Dad sign a form. That official in turn hands down that precious pass to the student.

Buena Park High junior Serena Orrosquieta’s dad did it for her two years ago. She heads to Taco Bell almost daily for the burritos and Coke she hankers for (“I love them,” she says). Once in a great while, she visits Pizza Shack across the street in a vintage strip mall or neighboring Burger Town, a holdover from the era of roller-skating car hops.

Serena and dozens of other Buena Park High students walk a distance that most office-bound folk would only consider by car. Besides the burrito supremes, the 16-year-old enjoys the “fresh, air-conditioned” atmosphere of her favorite eatery to the stuffiness of her school cafeteria.

Besides, she adds, “It’s packed over there. We have too many students this year. It’s boring over there too.”

Serena saves a table while her sister, Rosio, 14, orders, along with friends Imelda Esqueda, 14, Misti Gardner, 16, and Patty Naranjo, 14. Misti maximizes her time in line to glide on another coat of red lipstick. Rosio yells out to her older sister, repeating her request as if after dozens of burritos this would be the day Serena suddenly changes her mind and wants something different.

It isn’t.

Just a week into ninth grade, Rosio enjoys being included in her sister’s lunch plans. Their dad agreed to sign a pass for her as he did for Serena in her freshman year. She shyly admits that some of her friends find her lucky to be able to leave campus. On the days she stayed with her classmates, lunch consisted of chips and Coke, sometimes a slice of pizza.

“I get full fast so I don’t have to eat very much,” says Rosio.

Calories and nutritional debates over eating fast food don’t bother Misti. “I’m an athlete,” she declares, confident that fat will never touch her thighs. “I’m in cross-country and swimming, so i burn it off real fast.” The sophomore just started going off-campus for lunch after spending a year trying to persuade her parents that it was necessary.

“I begged and begged and begged my mom,” recalls Misti. “She’s just scared that something could happen off-campus, you know, normal parent stuff.”

So how did Mom finally agree?

“I told her I’m grown up and the lines at school are too long. (The cafeteria) always runs out of stuff before I get there.”

The fun breaks. “We got 14 minutes!” yells out Imelda, a freshman, as she reaches the table with a tray.

Conversation ceases. In fact, much of the place silences as the diners inhale their food.

Eleven minutes later, the whole lot of them start dashing out the doors. Rosio mechanically chews her last bite standing up and throwing away her trash. Serena gives Rosio her wrappers. And they’re off.

Well, almost. Patty returns a few seconds later, a little out of breath, to retrieve her folder from the table.

The Scene is a weekly look at the trends and lifestyles of Orange County high-schoolers.