I chuckled to read in Bird by Bird author Ann Lamott’s suggestion that anyone and everyone write about their school lunches. I stopped reading to start typing.
‘Twas the night before First Grade and I now owned a pink ballerina lunch box --full of BPA. I don’t know if it really contained BPA, but since no plastic was ‘BPA-free’ in 1959, that’s what I conclude.
My father sat me down to explain how lunch at school was going to work. I was having a hard time parting from my security blanket and at the eleventh hour Dad came up with a solution.
“We know you don’t want to leave your blanket at home tomorrow, so Mummy will fold it up to fit inside your new lunch box. When the other kids open their lunches to eat a sandwich, an apple, or some cookies, you get out your blanket and hold it until lunchtime is over. Then put it back into the lunch box and remember to bring it home at the end of the day.”
I quickly opted to have her pack food for me instead. In hindsight, the blanket might have been less of an embarrassment.
I was never given the standard all-American lunch. No peanut butter and jelly or bologna on Town Talk for me! Mine was a saucy meatball sandwich on thick homemade bread, or worse, a fried egg sandwich and a wax-paper bag of pickles whose pungent juice would flood the ballerina’s pretty home by midmorning. I couldn’t trade any of this for candy, and no classmates wanted to sit too close to my atypical lunch. Complicating my experience was the glass thermos—hard to open for a six-year-old, and so easy to drop and break. Why couldn’t I buy a carton of milk there and not have to ask the teacher to loosen that thermos cap day after day?
Better yet, why couldn’t I buy my lunch and get those tickets-- brown ones for that day or the orange kind bought for the whole week. When the lunch bell rang, we packers lined up behind, always behind, the buyers to be led into the multi-purpose room. (We would come to learn what ‘multi-purpose’ meant.)
Cool tickets in hand, the buyers formed a line at the far end of the room along the stage. One by one, they disappeared through a doorway. In minutes, they emerged from another doorway carrying a pink or gray fiberglass tray and sat at the tables reserved for buyers. Their sectioned trays held, for example, a smooth dome of mashed potatoes fit perfectly inside its little boundaries, a roll and pat of butter on a tagboard square, and a camera-ready slab of meatloaf. The piece de résistance was the pleated white paper cup filled with a tablespoon or two of fruit cocktail—sometimes with that coveted cherry! It would be years before I could see what was behind those doors and meet the ladies with the hairnets.
The long Murphy-style tables with attached benches slid down the walls to receive us. We packers sat in our section and the mayhem began. I would watch some boys play with their food or trade-up for a sweeter snack. Distracted by the noise and chaos that are hallmarks of school lunchrooms, I struggled to finish eating in time to salvage any decent amount of recess. Mine was the last table Mickey, our custodian, would clean. The others had been folded and stood flush with the wall waiting for tomorrow. Eventually, preceded by his signature smell of institutional bleach water, Mickey approached. Smiling underneath his thick silver mustache, he delivered his version of ‘Last Call’ for kids.
“Don’t you want to get outside to play, Honey?” he gently prodded as he wiped around my spot with his stinky rag.
I nodded and kept chewing. I wanted to be on that playground more than anything, but I was stuck. My mother packed a lunch big enough for a coal miner and expected no leftovers in return. If I dared throw any of it away, I figured she would somehow find out. So, most days Mickey and I, the slowest eater ever enrolled in elementary school, closed the joint.
Lilly Kauffman is a non-fiction writer who was privileged to work as both librarian and a teacher. Her essays, whether serious or humorous, capture the experiences that allow us to laugh and grieve. Family and faith inform her writings. She is currently working on several book projects: A Mother Grieves in Ink, Ampersand, and Lil Letters.