Another indication that schools are tougher places than they used to be: At Ball High in Galveston yesterday, officials used pepper spray to break up a lunchtime food fight. Back in Houstonist's day, we would have been administered a stern rap across the knuckles with a wooden ruler, but no one would ever have thought to spray pepper at us. Oh, wait.

The brawl broke out yesterday during one of Ball High's five lunch periods; according to Galveston ISD spokeswoman Christine Hopkins, it began with two students throwing food at each other and quickly escalated into a full-fledged food fight. Two police officers and two security guards were called in to restore order, and one officer used the pepper spray on the two students who started the fight when they didn't respond to verbal commands to stop fighting. No other students were hit with the spray, Hopkins said, but some school staff members were. Oops!

LeeRoy Amador, the school district's chief of police, said he thought the fight might have been the result of overlapping lunch schedules during TAKS testing. You know how territorial kids can be about their Salisbury steak.