Carla, a senior at Half Hollow Hills High School, returns home exhausted after extra help with her academic studies, a rigorous track practice and an SAT review class. It is 10 p.m., and while most kids her age are going to bed, she is only starting to dig into the tower of homework assignments on her desk. But rather than succumb to fatigue, she works until her essays are finished, and flawless, determined not to sacrifice a point on her homework average and consequently damage her GPA.
Adrianne Goldenbaum, lunch director of the West Babylon School District for the past 30 years, witnesses the poor eating habits of many Long Island children in school cafeterias daily. She fears she may even have unintentionally contributed to them.
“When I first started in food service everything was made from scratch—Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, even the rolls,” Goldenbaum explains. “Then, all of a sudden, it became fast food and everything was fried and the caloric intake of meals was much higher.”
Every morning was the same: Brendan would get up for school. He’d put on his clothes and eat his breakfast. His mother, Ashley, would make sure everything was in his backpack. As the time inched forward, he thought about getting on the school bus, walking into the classroom. His stomach tightened. His nerves grew frayed. He became silent. And then, before he would leave his house, Brendan had to do one more thing to start his day.
He went to the bathroom and threw up.
Every weekend, 8-year-old Brianna Bermudez of Bay Shore sits behind a bright yellow table with a bucket of lemonade and a red vase on the corner of West Leila and Manhattan Avenues in South Tampa with her grandmother. Her roadside profits, nearing $4,000, would have sent most kids into early retirement from the lemonade business [...]
Toby, 21, was an honor student at Walt Whitman High School in South Huntington and is now a biology major at Stony Brook University. His prospective landlord hands Toby a lease to sign. His signature? He has none. He scribbles his name.
Amanda waits impatiently for an important package to arrive from FedEx. When the doorbell rings and she signs for the materials that arrive in a cooler, she feels relieved knowing that all she has to do now is wait. The package needs to settle at room temperature.
