The Cafeteria Guard

The Bullies guarded the Cafeteria door, extorting lunch money as a condition for entry. It was traditional. It was so traditional that everyone accepted it as the Natural Order. The Principal lauded the Bullies as the Guardians of the Culinary System, and the Bullies often bragged that they were too big to expel. The Kids grumbled ... not within the Bullies' hearing, of course ... but most of them paid up and lived with the status quo.

So the Bullies made out like bandits, or as bandits, really, but the School demanded a cut of the take. The Bullies, never happy to part with so much as a farthing, bitched and moaned, but (like the Kids) paid up in the end. They realized that they needed the School to legitimize their extortion and make sure that no other gang horned in on their game. So everyone was happy.

Well. not exactly everyone. Some of the Kids couldn't afford the protection fee on top of the lunch, and some just weren't willing to put up with it. Eventually, those Kids banded together into a Lunch Club and started bringing their own lunches, which they ate on the playground, in vacant classrooms, or in any other place that the Bullies weren't.

It didn't take long for the Bullies to realize that there were a few Kids who weren't ponying up. When they figured out what was going on, they complained to the School.

"That Lunch Club has an unfair advantage," whined the Bullies. "They aren't paying you the kickback we are. How are we supposed to compete with that? Besides, you're always complaining that you don't have enough revenue. Make 'em pay the kickback. That'll solve your cash-flow problems."

The School thought that was a splendid idea.

"Now, just one cotton-pickin' minute," protested the Lunch Club. "There's a very important difference between the Bullies and the Lunch Club. The Bullies extort money from Kids for the privilege of eating in the School Cafeteria. The School gets a piece of the action for looking the other way while the Bullies run their racket in the School Cafeteria. The Lunch Club isn't a part of that diseased system. We aren't making a dime, and we aren't exploiting School lunch resources. It's illogical to make us pay for profits we don't make on a system we don't participate in."

"Screw you logic," replied the Bullies. "As long as you exist, there's a nickel or two that we can't get our hands on. That's the only logic that matters."