Today I saw a travesty occur at the lunch table of such magnitude that I had to write about it as soon as I could and hopefully prevent such a terrible act from ever happening again.
Hello everyone, I’m Hank and today at school I saw a 3rd grader and a 4th grader perform A Snack Trade and to my dismay the 3rd grader was completely taken advantage of.
He gave away two delicious and appetizing Twinkies for one apple. First of all everyone should know that two is greater than one. Even kindergartners know this and it should have been a major red flag for our 3rd grader. Second, never ever ever trade sweets for fruits. This is a big mistake. Actually I understated that. Trading sugar goodness for items that make their own seeds is a COLOSSAL mistake.
I tried to intervene on behalf of our 3rd grader, but by the time I screamed out, “Stop!” it was too late. The items had exchanged hands, a binding contract that no court in the world could overturn.
To help in future trades I have created The Official Lunch Trading Value System and offer it here free of charge. My gift to the world. Simply follow the value system below and you will never come out on the bad side of a lunch trade.
To understand the trading system you must first know that if you are at a younger grade level than the person you are going into trade negotiations with, you are at a distinct disadvantage. For every grade level you are in you must add 1 bonus point to each of the food items designated points.
For instance, Twinkies are a 10 point food. So if you are in 3rd grade, they are a 13 point food, if you are in 4th grade they are a 14 point food, 5th grade they are 15 and so on and so forth. (By the way, so on and so forth is an extremely cool phrase in today’s society and I have begun using it in almost every situation. Especially when discussing my awful older brother Todd. Example: Todd is so stinky that he makes bears go into early hibernation, birds loose their feathers, and so on and so forth.)
Back to the Twinkie example above. To help understand the bonus points better, if you are a 2nd grader with a Twinkie attempting to trade a 3rd grader with a Twinkie his Twinkie is technically 1 point greater than yours, even though they are both Twinkies. Stinks I know, but if you were to attempt the same trade with a 1st grader, your Twinkie is now one point greater so it all evens itself out. I think the best rule here is to stay within your own grade level to get the most fair trades available.
Also, if your item is homemade like your mom’s homemade meatloaf you must deduct two points. This rule may seem the most unfair since some homemade items, like sugar cookies, can actually be pretty tasty. It’s the fact that a homemade item is an unknown to the other party in the trade. They may not know your mom’s homemade sugar cookies are delicious and therefore you must deduct the two points to keep the trade fair to the other person.
And lastly, rare foods are given two bonus points. This one everyone understands because in the art of the Lunch Trade the same items are up for grabs almost everyday, chocolate pudding cups are a dime a dozen, bananas are traded in groves, but a full sized candy bar – That’s a rare item. It’s like Indiana Jones finding an ancient gold artifact, everyone wants to take it from him because it’s a one of a kind.
Oh, I almost forgot. DO NOT TRADE THINGS WITH NUTS IN THEM. There are like five thousand different nut allergies going around in grade school these days and I once saw Timothy Gender trade a pack of peanuts to Lisa Beckman for a half of a bag of Doritos, a good trade on all accounts, except Lisa was apparently allergic to peanuts and ten minutes after eating she swelled up bigger than a whale and had to go to the emergency room. So play it safe and do not trade any items containing anything from the nut family.
Without further waiting here is The Official Lunch Trading Value System:
12 Pointers
Full Sized Candy Bars
Fruit Rolls-Ups
Birthday Cake Slices
String Cheese
10 Pointers
Any Little Debbie or Hostess Snacks. This includes snowballs, which in my opinion are gross, but they are in the sugar snack family, hence the 10 point value.
8 Pointers
Specialty Bags of Good Stuff. Examples: Fritos, Cheese Puffs, and Funyuns. This also includes Cheez-It’s, but not GoldFish. GoldFish though a cheese based cracker like a Cheez-It are tasty, the small shape of the GoldFish and the need to swallow them in large quantities for any real tasty substance eliminates them from the 8 point value ranking. The only exception to this rule is the white cheese GoldFish, which is rare and therefore gets two bonus points making it an 8 pointer.
6 Pointers
Bag of chips
Gold Fish
Lunchables
Pudding Cups
4 Pointers
Fruits – all fruits are 4 pointers. It’s widely known that some fruits are far more tasty than others, but it usually comes down to personal preference and; therefore, the only sure way to keep it fair in the land of Lunch Trading is to assign the same point value to all fruits. If you think you can get more for your strawberries, feel free to go for it, but don’t be surprised nor offended if your trade is denied by the other party.
2 Pointers
Sandwiches of any style
Homemade Foods
0 Pointers
Leftovers from last nights meal that your mom lazily put in your lunchbox. Look this stinks for you, but you shouldn’t pass along your stinky situation to some other kid. You are stuck and going to have to eat what was packed or go hungry. The only other solution is to find some other poor soul in the same situation as you and see if he or she is willing to do a trade of their stinky leftovers for yours.
A Worm Named Hank 