High School Cafeterrible

I heard a news story this morning regarding concerns that terrorists may attempt to attack the United States through school lunches. I say that if terrorists infiltrated public school cafeterias, and started prepaing the meals, it might be a step up. Now, it's true that I haven't eaten in a school lunchroom in several years, and possibly the quality of the food is better than when I was a kid.
But, talk about terror. I faced it every day of my life. Except, those days when I bagged my lunch. The cooks at the schools I attended were, now that I think about it, probably terrorists themselves. What else could account for those bright red hot dogs they used to serve.
You may be thinking that a hot dog is a hot dog is a hot dog. But not these hot dogs. I couldn't look at a hot dog until several years after I finished school. They'd serve up these gnarly looking weiners that evidently had been injected with about a pint of red food coloring. I wonder what they looked like before they were dyed. And the only topping they'd give us was about the cheapest, most putrid-tasting ketchup imaginable. I'm getting the shakes just remembering that horrible time in my life.
Occasionally, they'd serve hamburgers in school. Now, how can you ruin a hamburger? Well, I don't know how they did it, but they had a method of cooking the burger so that it was completely dry. I mean the table we were sitting at had more moisture (and taste) than those pathetic patties. You could smother them in that delicious ketchup and still need a stick to stuff it down your throat. The sounds of kids gagging would fill the cafeterial on hamburger days.
And, If the hot dogs and hamburgers didn't do you in, the green beans would. Canned green beans are pretty pathetic to begin with, but I think these cafeterrorists had some sort of flavor enhancing canned food taste additive they would mix into the beans. Plop those beans on the plate with that big red weiner and it had a pretty terrifying impact.
I really can't think of anything that was served in the cafeterias during my school years that I would call good. The mashed potatoes were fake. I think they were basically paper mache. The Salisbury steak was exceptionally bad, and just to be sure the kids were terrorized they'd top it with some sort of hideous brown gooey stuff that they actually had the nerve to call gravy. Even the desserts were virtually inedible. I say virtually because, after all, it was sugary, so I had to eat it.
I say to those terrorists, bring it on. I don't think you could concoct anything to begin to compare with the crud we used to be served in school. Maybe the U.S. could institute some sort of terrorist exchange program and send the school cafeteria cooks from here over there. Nah, that would never work. Can you imagine if we started serving public school lunches to the prisoners in Iraq. The uproar would make that Abu Graib thing look like a picnic in the park.