As I mentioned in a previous post, I was a finicky eater from the very beginning. I don’t know when exactly I decided I didn’t like many foods, but it happened. Sometime before I began elementary school, I’m guessing.
I can still remember the lunchtime smells that hung dismally in the hallways at Eugene Field Elementary. They became noticeable around 10:00am, and increased their intensity as we approached the dreaded Lunchtime Hour. I don’t imagine it took me very many days at my new school to decide that I would NOT be eating cafeteria lunches. My little circle of friends sat at the same table all year, and every day we gazed suspiciously at the variety of substances in each little section of the beige lunch trays. We all heard the rumors that went around school about stuff that was found in the food – huge worms in the green beans, band-aids in the meatloaf, other various bugs here and there. Were these rumors true? Who knows. But the hundreds of lunch boxes lining the window sills in the classrooms gave testimony that most of the kids in my school believed them.
I got my very first lunchbox in first grade. It was vinyl-covered red with Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans on the front. We first-graders learned quickly from the older kids just exactly how we were supposed to set up our lunch. Our boxes were laid down, opened, emptied of its contents, then set up where the lid made a small pallet on which to set our food. If we were lucky enough to have a Thermos inside, it would be opened and the lid used as a drinking cup. My lunchbox had one, and mom usually put chocolate milk in it for me. I loved my mama for that. In addition to not liking the cafeteria food, I also did not care for the icky sour smell on the little milk cartons we could get at the school. So I was very grateful to mom for sending milk in my lunch.
Our family didn’t have a lot of money, and when the end of the month rolled around it was easy to tell by what mom put in my lunches. I would find cheese and jam sandwiches, fried bologna sandwiches, fried sliced Spam, or even Miracle Whip and dill pickle sandwiches. Delicious desserts would give way to over-ripe bananas or soda crackers smeared with butter. I can remember being made fun of when I pulled out the pickle sandwiches. Quite often, the end-of-month food went uneaten, and it would sit the rest of the day in the lunchbox, getting warm and smelly. To avoid enduring a stern “talking to” for not eating my lunch, I would leave the lunchbox at school, sometimes for days. That way, mom would have to put something that wouldn’t spoil, like peanut butter sandwiches, in a lunch sack the next day. That little ploy didn’t work very well. And she would be furious with me for bringing home (finally) a stinky lunchbox reeking of soured milk and overheated cheese mixed with really ripe bananas.
I used that Captain Kangaroo lunchbox for several years, until it became really uncool to plop it down on the cafeteria table next to the sleek Barbie or Brady Bunch lunchboxes. I don’t remember what kind I got next, so maybe I simply began taking my lunch in a brown sack. Seems like I got stuck with a grocery sack from Piggly Wiggly once or twice. What was my mother thinking??? It was apparent that I was destined to stand out even more than I already did, being a red-headed, freckle-faced, gangly “quiet girl”.
When my daughter was in early elementary school, kids didn’t take lunchboxes. Instead, they took their lunches in little white or brown bags! While she was little enough to appreciate it I drew cute things on the front of her lunch bags and put sweet notes inside. She looked forward to lunchtime so she could read what I put in her love notes. My daughter’s friends said her mom was cool. Big smile. Of course, that all changed in fourth grade or so, when everybody had to have the multi-colored fabric lunch bags with zippers and straps. Dad could get by with drawing a smiley face or heart on a Post-It note and sneaking it inside Lori’s lunchbox, but I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. Tear.
Not since elementary school have I eaten a cheese and jam sandwich, nor have I ever given my family fried Spam or bologna. Oddly enough, though, the pickle and Miracle Whip sandwich stuck with me. I actually had one the other day. It just sounded good to me. My husband looked at me funny while I ate it.
He probably would have been one of those mean boys at my lunch table.
Lady of Lavender Cottage 
I come from the paper bag generation, and I loved the notes from mom! Years later when I switched schools and had to bring a packed lunch to high school she still snuck notes into my box. It was always great to have the reminder of her with me, especially because the transition to the new school was not so easy!
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