An Indiana mother was shocked when her son sent her a photo during his lunch period at school.

It turns out he had forgotten his lunch money and – because kids need to eat in order to learn – the school gave him a sandwich. A moldy peanut butter sandwich.

This isn’t just any moldy sandwich, it’s a noticeably moldy sandwich – the kind any cafeteria worker should be trained to spot and dispose of immediately.

This all happened back in 2016 when Anders posted a message to Facebook (that has since been deleted) explaining that her son opened the sandwich to find that there was mold on the inside and outside of the bread.

The boy alerted cafeteria workers and the sandwich was replaced – however, at that point he was afraid to eat it.

And we don’t blame him! Not only can this lead to a pretty bad stomach ache, but without knowing what kind of mold it was (which is impossible to judge with the naked eye anyway), inhaling the spores could have made him sick as well.

Anders’ post went viral and she received a lot of support from parents but just as much criticism. In fact, some people even claimed she was neglecting her child by not making sure he had lunch.

But what’s a mom to do? Kids forget their lunch money all the time.

In response to the post, Avon Community School Corporation released a statement:

“We are grateful to be made aware of the situation and have reached out to the parents and apologized. This is an unacceptable human error and we are looking into it to ensure that this never happens again.”

After the fact, there were plenty of news stories that misrepresented Anders’ level of fury or implied she spoke with the news when in fact all she did was explain the situation on her Facebook page and show the moldy bread photos her son sent her.

A few days later, she made it clear that she was happy with how the school handled the situation. What she wasn’t happy with was how complete strangers handled it.

But as she says, when something is made public and shareable online, you have to take responsibility for it.

The comments were just as dire on the local news sites that posted the story. Many people blamed the parents and assumed they were delinquent in lunch fees or worse.

One commenter went all out, assuming the child might be going hungry at home and that Anders should be punished, clearly not understanding that she had very little context:

“No child should have to go hungry. It’s the parent’s fault. Maybe that child is not getting food at home either. If the parents don’t care enough to send lunch money. Punish them someway. Not an innocent child. No child should go hungry.”

It’s amazing the lengths complete strangers will go to just to tell parents they’re doing a bad job.

As usual, if you’re looking to restore any faith you may have lost in humanity, the comments section on a local news story is not the place to be.

The important thing to focus on here is the wealth of stories one can find on social media of schools around the country serving moldy meals.

Of course, no cafeteria sets out to do this – and the ones that have been called out have promised to change – but food standards in some of these facilities are clearly not as high as they should be.

Let’s focus on changing that rather than hurling insults at parents.

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Source: WishTV.com, WATE 6 News via Facebook