Johnny-on-the-Spot … by John Foster …

With each passing day, there’s another “crisis” we have to deal with.

Now, it’s “lunch-shaming”.

It’s when smartphone-toting students catch candid shots of other students at lunch time.

The most-popular is “the ugly mouthful” or the “lonely eater”.

It’s the newest form of cyberbullying.

Some say “lunch shaming”: has made kids “too terrified” to eat at school.

It’s leading to embarrassment and isolation.

Reports indicate 14% of elementary school students and 18% of middle and high school students say they’ve been “bullied” in the cafeteria in the past month.

Some students have resorted to eating in the classroom or in some out-of-the-way location.

There’s another problem related to school lunches. The USDA says free school lunch programs feed nearly 30 million children a year.

Sometimes those children get singled out when they have to wear a wrist band or are somehow marked.

I understand some are given alternative “meals” like a simple cheese sandwich.

Punk with a smartphone sees a kid choking down a cheese sandwich and the photos get taken and posted.

I’m thinking I might have been targeted when eating my simple peanut butter sandwich.

I wouldn’t call that a cheap alternative.

That’s the “staff of life” for this kid!

There’s also a “long-standing” issue of cafeteria teasing that has evolved into something more persistent and public.

My opinion?

The long-term solution to this “cyberbullying craze’ is parenting.

If my Dad or Mom told me, “Knock off that bullying thing!” I’d say “Sir! Yes, Sir!” or “Ma’am! Yes, Ma-am!” and it would not have been a problem any more.

I knew when they said, “Jump!”, I’d respond with “How high?” on the way up.

But a quicker fix might be available with the banning of smartphones in school.

Quetion.

How many of these school bullies actually pay for their own smartphones?

I’d be holding some “financial hostages” if that product wasn’t used properly.

This whole cyberbullying phenomena was impossible when the phones were attached to the wall.

The raciest thing we did in those days was to listen in on the “party line” to somebody else’s conversation.

You needed a light touch to pull that off (Or so I’ve heard!).

So, if students can’t have their cellphones in school, that form of bullying would go away.

Might open up a new market for sketch artists.

I also think more people need to see their deermitoligist.

They need tougher skin.

I’m reminded of my high school marching band days.

I used to get blisters when twirling the beaters for the bass drum.

My Dad came up with the idea that maybe is I soaked my hands in a tannic acid solution, that might toughen up my skin and I wouldn’t get those big, oozing blisters on my digits.

Not sure that it really helped but my hands looked like an old baseball mitt.

A tannic acid mix, perhaps from black tea bags, can be a natural astringent and help toughen the skin.

I think my biggest problem was the fact I didn’t start soaking my hands until band camp started.

But I think more than a few people should soak in their tea rather than drink it because they need to quit being so sensitive.

By the way, is there something called “bus shaming”/

I see so many folks drvviing their students to and from school that I wonder how schools can afford to run busses.

We had one year after we moved into the new Eastview allotment and the roads were so bad in the spring that we had to walk about a half-mile to Ashland Road to catch the school bus.

Can you say quagmire?

But this shaming thing is what happens when kids have no limits placed on them.

It’s interesting to note that If I got called out by a teacher at school, I also got called out by Mom and Dad.

Today, some parents ask the teacher, “Why are you picking on my child?’

This “shaming” matter can be cleared up with better controls on cellphone usage but it should be at home first.

Therein lies the problem.

Anytime parents let someone else take more control of their youngsters, you’re shirking your responsibility as a Mom or Dad.

Maybe we need a little “parent shaming”.