Author Anne Lamott wrote a book called Bird by Bird which I am reading right now. The subtitle aptly states that it's advice on writing and in life, which it is. One piece of advice she gives is through comparing writing to school lunches. She then goes on to write her own brain-dumpy piece on school lunches to learn more about character.
And then I thought, there's actually a lot of content in school lunches. I'm not talking about nutrition; I'm talking about details.
I went to private school where you couldn't buy traditional lunches. What you could do was opt to order food from a local place. In the early days, Monday was chicken nugget day and Wednesday was mozzarella stick day. Tuesdays were always pizza day. Later, Wednesday would become pasta day. I'm not sure why I participated in pizza and pasta day. They just were not good. The pizza came from Papa Johns and was a thin slice of cardboard that tasted more like overdone crust. A friend of mine showed me how to make it slightly more tolerable by pulling the cheese off.
There was one redeeming factor on pasta day: garlic bread! Not the garlic bread itself, but the tinfoil it was wrapped in. My friend and I kept it in the front pouch of our lunchboxes, seeing how long it would stay in shape and making other shapes out of it too. It wasn't just us. One of the boys made a small canoe out of it, and put two tiny pieces inside, calling them Lewis and Clark. He'd move the boat around until it went upside down, the tiny explorers falling all the way down onto the lunch table and meeting their untimely demise with only an "oh no!" from their creator.
I was more versed in packed lunches.
The process of preparing lunch was more fun in kindergarten. Mom and I would prepare what I wanted every day of the week, writing it all down on a piece of paper and sticking it to the fridge. Lunch combos were more interesting back then, being chicken patties with ketchup sent in Tupperware, or taco Lunchables.
Things got simpler as time went on. My dad often made us a sandwich or peanut butter between Ritz crackers. One time I opened my baggie to see what looked to be soggy mold between the Ritz crackers. When neither my best friend not I could figure what it was, I threw it in the trash. Turns out it was cream cheese.
Also, drinks. Hi-C, Juicy Juice, and Capri Sun were the winners (though to be frank, Capri Sun was just okay). My best friend and I would compete, when we were young, to see whose had the fewest grams of sugar, and the Dragon Tales characters on them were also a plus. In fifth grade my friend would bring yummy looking juice drinks called Dazzlers. I thought they were very cool and asked Mom to get me some, too. Well, they were cool...except for the time she found a brown thing floating in the lemonade. (There was another mishap where she spilled grape juice all over herself, requiring a change of clothes. Who knew so much could fit in those little bottles?)
Another snacktime favorite in third grade was Parmalat chocolate milk. Popular snacks over time included GoGurt tubes, 100 calorie packs, donut holes, and if I was lucky, cookies we baked the previous day.
But also, lunch was a time to catch up. I still remember packing a fortune cookie in my lunch one day. The fortune read, "You and your wife will be very happy together." This drew the attention of some eighth grade girls and one of the teachers, and we all laughed. A friend and I would often share our dreams, though I'd often make mine up. And then it would be time to, alas, pack up and go to class.
May your lunches be healthful and delicious this coming school year.
