Lunch

When I was little, pre-school age, I ate the same thing for lunch every single day. Every single day, my mom asked what I would like for lunch that day and every single day I said, "Bologna, cheese, mustard and bread." It became a mantra, chanted as though holy words were being spoken. I loved that sandwich. I hate it now. Of course the bologna is out of the question and I abstain from those individually wrapped slices of processed American cheese food that used to grace my lunch meat. I still like mustard, but Wonder bread hasn't played a part in my life for decades.

When I started school, I desperately wanted to eat my lunch there like the "bussers." But instead, I was expected home everyday. And every single day before school, my mom asked what I wanted for lunch. And every single day I said, "Chicken pie." That was a Banquet Chicken Pot Pie. When you are small, they are big. Now that I'm big, they look to be the size of a mini-quiche. I hate those things now. Of course the chicken is out of the question, but the whole idea of eating something that is probably made out of cuts barely a grade above dog food by toddlers in Indonesian sweatshops turns me off.

Then I got my wish. And I wished I hadn't. I got to eat lunch at school. My mother saved bags from the grocery store - very ahead of her time, I suppose, with the reduce, reuse, recycle idea. She went to the bakery quite often and as a result we had a bunch of paper bags that were the size between the small lunch bags and the large grocery bags. She packed my lunches in those bakery bags and for that purpose they were huge and embarrassing. She folded them over several times and put a rubber band around them, and they were still gigantic. Who carries their lunch like that? I had to carry it under my arm since with the rubber band there was nowhere to grab onto it. Every other kid in the whole school had a regular lunch bag or cool tin lunch box. I had a bag that made me look like a compulsive overeater. I begged her to buy lunch bags, but she flatly refused. Why should she when we had all these bags for free?

In my pantry I have a load of regular lunch bags (Madeleine has lost two reusable ones, so since I will not keep buying things that she loses, even though I'm not being environmentally friendly, we use paper.) , but sometimes when Maddie packs her own lunch, she uses a big bag with handles from a store. Once she used such a big one, I asked her, wouldn't you rather use a smaller bag? It looks like you're carrying lunch for the whole school. She said, nah, who cares?

Where did she come from?