This question came up quite regularly in middle school. I grew very sick of hearing it too, but there was nothing I could do about it.
I'm not a speed walker by any means and that's one of reasons I was usually last to the lunch room. Once the bell rang, the doors of the classrooms banged open and a thunderous sound could be heard milliseconds before a flood of kids filled the halls headed for lunch.
Sometimes the teachers would let me leave a few minutes before the bell, so I could get down the halls without being trampled. Most often, when I reached the lunchroom, I would walk right passed the line that formed for lunch. I would cut right in the front of the line and hand them my lunch ticket.
Who was I anyway? A teacher?
Some might say I have a big mouth, well...verbally speaking, they might be right. When it comes to eating, though, my mouth doesn't open as wide as most (even after jaw surgery at age 18). So it takes me many more trips to my mouth than you might take.
Lunch hour was not an hour, it was more like twenty minutes (some days seemed like five minutes to me). Most of the time I could eat my whole lunch in fifteen minutes, that is, if I was first in line. By the time the end of the line got their food, ten minutes past by. I'd never get finished in time for my next class if I ended up at the back of the line.
The fact that I cut in line made many of my classmates angry. I know that all too well. You would think that after the first couple weeks of the school year my classmates would be used to me cutting in, but that wasn't the case. Throughout the year, one kid or a group of kids would always chime in with, "Why does he get to cut in line?" or "What makes you so special?"
Each day, I'd ready myself for the questions, cherishing the days they forgot to ask. Was there a better way to do this?
I suppose some other options could have been suggested. One that pops to mind is eating in a separate area, like the nurse's office or something, having the food there when I arrived. Then I wouldn't be constantly ridiculed by my classmates.
The flip side, and the reason I put up with it, is that they were my classmates and this one of the few times during the day that I could talk with some of my friends and classmates. Sometimes it was my friends that told the question askers to pipe down.
In any case, lunch was a quick twenty minutes, but at the same time it was time for friends. When you happen to be a kid with a disability in a school where most of the kids in the school don't have a disability, it takes time and understanding to get along.
The kids in the school need to understand the limitations of the kid with a disability. While, the kid with a disability has to realize that, until the kids understand, it's going to be rough.
In school, learning isn't restricted to the classroom. For my classmates and me, it was in the lunchroom. Understand the limitations of others before making quick judgements. One day, it might be you who is being misunderstood.