School Lunches Pt. 2

A lot of reactions to Pt. 1. It seems I was oblivious to the Vinyl bags being the final stage of evolution. How could I, I was a Buyer? Mags filled in some details for my last post and reminded me vomiting in the lunch line, but I think I've said enough about that already.

Today I want to focus on the contents of the school lunches.

As a Buyer, I can recall exactly the FDA approved lunches I used to get served. They often tried to add things like peaches to make something seem healthy but they were always out of a big can in heavy syrup. Being a Buyer taught you the important lesson: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." You had no control on the menu, the portion or the temperature of the food. Each day you show up and take your beating. Somedays, yak, creole spaghetti and other days Pizza!

Us Buyers really resented you Bringers when you crossed the line and bought your lunch on Pizza day! This was our line, our lunch lady! But sure, when its convenient for you come Buy a lunch and make the line super long!

The Bringers lunches seemed much more interesting to me:

* A sandwich wrapped in that plastic bag with a flap. (This was before the proliferation of ziplock bags.) The sandwich was usually bologna on white, PB&J on white, or ham and cheese on white. Wheat bread meant a sure fire beating I was sure. Occasionally there was one leaf of lettuce on there for some reason.

* Carrot sticks - I never knew why so many kids got these, but they seemed to like them. They ate them, and I still don't know why.

* Drink - Sometimes moms sent a quarter in the bag to buy milk but more often they sent Capri Sun or used that awesome matching THERMOS! The best was one soda wrapped in Tin Foil! The tin foil didn't keep it "not cool, but palatable... not cool, but palatable." (That last quote was for Ms. Patty.)

* Chips - I usually got a handful of chips in a sandwich bag, pre-crunched. But some kids got those proportioned little bags of chips. I also recall how horrible it was when the 20 count variety bag was down to Frito's how horrible that could be. You'd eaten all the Cheetos and Doritos and were down to corn toe nails.

* Fruit - Apple or Banana standard. An orange was too much work. Most of the Bringers I knew often threw away the fruit still in the paper bag. (Touch luck starving kids in China.)

* Dessert - It was always an odd number of cookies. No self respecting mom would give their child 2 or 4 Oreos. It had to be 3 or 5, rarely 1 if it was a big oatmeal creme number.

* The infamous note - I remember little notes being written on napkins. I was envious of them, but the Bringers were shamed by them. They desperately didn't want anyone to know that they had a mother who loved them and who drew little hearts on their napkin.

Clearly the moms of America sat down each morning with the food pyramid and did their best to live up to it.

But what about the wild card of school lunches: Dads. I could always tell when for some reasons a dad had been forced to make the school lunch of a friend. It would be like a comedy of errors. Instead of ham and cheese you got Pimento cheese. Or they tried to make PB&J and had used Apricot instead of Grape, what a scandal. An even number of cookies, usually too many, like 6. No fruit, instead whatever was prepackaged around the house: granola bars, pop tarts, croutons. Thankfully they left no note.

School Lunches Pt. 1

A universal American experience is the elementary school lunch. A lot of thought and preparation went into slapping bologna on bread back in those days.



I was 99% of the time a kid who bought their lunch. I envied those brown paper bags and Ninja Turtle Lunch box kids, the Bringers. So I did what any anxious kid did, analyzed them out of the corner of my eye so that one day, if I brought a lunch, I could blend in with the brown baggers. But that was a rarity, we were a buy-your-lunch family not a bring-your-lunch family.



Today, I think I'll focus my jealous nostalgia on one aspect of the school lunch experience. The container. I had no choice in my container, just a plastic tray and they only came in one color, tan... or was it faded blue? (Maggie might remember.)



Anyway, the Bringers always had a lot of variety in their lunch container. My favorites were the lunch boxes with coordinated thermoses! Genius! Oh, what I wouldn't have given for one of those. (Of course, I had one but there was never a lunch inside it so it stayed at home.)



The lunch box gave you a chance to declare you allegiance to something too. There was the G.I. Joes, the Ninja Turtles, the A-Team! There were also female equivalents, but since as a 1st grader girls were just a buzz on the periphery of my mind I don't remember them as well. (Like I said, Maggie will probably remember. She's entrusted to keep my memories for me, for example, what's the name of the teacher who had us sing "Texas our Texas" every morning? I don't know but guess who will.) But I digest (ba-dum-ching).



I also remember the fickle winds of fate that blew through the lunch room sometimes. It seemed one semester you had to have Ninja Turtles, then suddenly after Christmas the turtles were lame! Only dweebs still had that kids show. Now you had to have the Power Rangers.



Upon reflection on this topic with Jeffro, he said, "Nothings said maturity like a brown paper bag." I hadn't realized this. I was a Buyer, Jeff was a Bringer. As an outsider, I never realized there was a hierarchy. But its clear to me now. When you finally rose above the petty childish plastic lunch boxes (with awesome matching thermos) you brought the brown paper bag.



But there is nothing like a lunch box! When I got my current employment I bought this lunch box for myself.

I hope to one day have my last meal served in my Last Supper Lunch box.




I guess I have a lot more to say about lunches, like what goes in them so I've added that "Pt. 1" to the title. I'll get back to you after lunch. I'll leave you with my parting bit of angst.

As all of you Bringers opened you boxes and bag I had to carry that tan/blue tray to the table. And everyday somebody had to say: "Hey, nice tray, Trey!" Every single day of my life! It happened a week ago at the Casa Linda Cafeteria! It's a wonder I'm not on top of a bell tower somewhere with a painball gun and a thermos full of chicken and stars taking my revenge on the world.

And now you know the rest of the story... mmmmm, Good day!