Food fights are one of those things that are constantly in movies and TV shows and yet I’ve never seen one happen in real life once, nor has anyone I ever asked.
Is this some weird thing that used to happen all the time in the olden days, or is it yet another hollywood invention that only gets repeated because it constantly happens on the screen?
Edit: I should clarify, food fights at places that aren’t organized events, so no festivals or organized events like orange throwing or deliberately messy competitions.
Yes, it was a semi-popular lunchtime pastime at my junior high school in Michigan( 7th and 8th grade ). I probably got stuck in half-dozen or so and they were very much ‘Animal House-style’ food fights with a lot of missiles whizzing by in a short burst of frantic activity. I never participated except to duck, because I actually liked eating my lunch.
The school administration loathed them of course, but apparently none of the teachers/administrators wanted to waste their own lunch hours riding herd on a bunch of rowdy tweeners. At any rate they were generally over and done with in just a few minutes, as ammo was limited and the very aggressive principal was an imposing dude( ‘Terrible Ivan’ )who would respond pretty quickly.
Sort of. My father had an explosive temper, and it wasn’t beneath him to fling an entire plate of dinner at someone, or at the wall, in one of his tantrums. We learned to duck at a very early age.
Whole family had one once in 1953 or 1954. I would have been five or six years old with a younger brother and sister. Don’t recall how it started but I do remember the uproarious laughter as all five of us were slinging spaghetti (with sauce) all over each other and the kitchen.
Freshman year in college, the year before Animal House was released. Huge dining hall with very high ceilings. Finals week, everybody really stressed out. Rolls served with dinner. Unusually quiet in the room. One roll goes flying across the room, then two more, suddenly a blizzard of rolls flying everywhere. I don’t remember much being thrown besides rolls.
Rumor was that dining services would always serve lots of rolls during finals week so that the inevitable food fight(s) would be mostly limited to easily cleaned up ammunition.
Yep. Kingsbury Middle School. Someone opened the door to the cafeteria, reached in and shut off the lights. Every tray in the room was flung with abandon, followed by a mad rush to flee the scene of the crime.
You should have seen that place when the lights were restored.
At sleep away camp. We did a number on the dining hall. We had to help clean it up. Didn’t do that again.
I was volunteering at the lil’wrekkers school once and saw a 1st grade table erupt into food throwing. Them 1st graders were brutal. Throwing milk cartons and apples.
This is incredible to me. So many food fights. How have you people lived?
First grade we all got kicked out of the cafeteria and had to eat in the classroom for a week. There was stuff everywhere and I was hungry all afternoon because I didn’t save anything to munch on. I remember getting carried away and mixing milk and Hawaiian Punch then pouring it over my friend Ty’s head. I really liked Ty. I have no idea why I did that to him. Still feel bad when I think of the look on his face.
Once when my Dad went out of town on business my Mom and Brother got into one - there were peas and bits of meatloaf everywhere. I don’t think I really got into that one - was just watching. The dog cleaned up most of it. I’ve never seen her happier.
Camp Tonawanda - food flying everywhere. But the worst was the tsunami of red bug juice flooding across the floor. In the end they just stained the whole woodfloor red with more bug juice powder. In fairness it was raw wood to start with, scarcely even sanded. You didn’t dare walk barefoot in there.
My Dad and Uncle at Thanksgiving arguing over the drumstick. That was very nearly a food FIGHT as they’d both been drinking. It was the cranberry sauce vs mashed potatoes in hands smashed in faces sort of thing. My Grandmother ended it quickly with a broomstick to the craniums. I was under the table.
Camp Merrimac - this one was outdoors, so particularly unrestrained. It was the end of session picnic. Hotdogs flew, buns were torn up and smushed into serious ammo. I remember one group of girls organized like a cannon team. They had a ketchup bottle, and one held it horizontal, another banged on the bottom, and a third/fourth had their arms around the group turning them as one and running them up to other groups to send a SPLAT! in the right faces. Another girl had a huge long sleeve of sandwich bread and she’d tear out and mash a handful then toss it at someone. The great gobs of potato salad. . .OH! The humanity! This was a very competitive (horse) jumping camp and these girls were not made of sugar and spice. We all went straight into the lake with our clothes on afterward to wash off and then the camp director made us carry the boxes of ice cream to the dumpster unopened.
I mean, those are just the really epic ones. There were so very many that were just four or five kids at a lunch table. Are you guys saying this has really never happened in your presence?!? Didn’t your school serve tater tots?
I forgot a really good one. Down on my Mother’s family farm in Georgia, we always used to crank up some iced cream after dinner. One time the vanilla had a leak and the salt water got in there. The kids all chased each other around with frozen handfuls of it until we collapsed of laughter and exhaustion. I remember laying there looking at the sky with my hand freezing willing myself to stop laughing and BREATHE so I could go hit my brother with it while he was incapacitated.
Freshman year of HS, the pudding stains remained on the wall until the cafeteria was repainted in junior year in advance of the once-a-decade accreditation process.
NYE, house party, brownie batter. Never did wear that (previously) blue & white rugby shirt again after she grabbed handfuls of batter & wiped them on my chest.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve never in my life been in or seen a food fight. And I’m not sure I understand why “being in a food fight” is something to be proud of. We have people begging for food in this country today, yet some of you think you should brag about wasting food because you threw it at each other when you were kids. Maybe grow up and stop acting like anything you did when you were kids was important.
I was arrested for being in a food fight about 5 years ago I was 65 at the time. No charges were filed thankfully. I bought a drunk lady a burger fries and a chocolate malt as she requested. When I handed her the food she threw the malt at me and followed up with the burger. I picked up what was left and smeared it in her face and went home. 1 hour later the cops showed up and handcuffed me and brought me back to her house where they questioned both of us about an assault. They dropped the matter and I went back home.
Several, but only one was of epic proportions. I was in 7th grade, the school covered grades 7-12 and it was mostly the older guys involved. I don’t know exactly how it started but one thing flew through air clear across the cafeteria and before long everything was flying. I remember sandwiches slamming into walls and windows, I got hit with some jello, the floor was covered with fruit and chips and who knows what. It couldn’t have lasted much more than a minute. Once the flurry of food began to ebb someone on staff shouted out “What is going on here!” and everybody fled for the exits like it was a police raid.
