catheroominations

don’t you miss the days when your mom would make your lunch when you were a kid? I do. other kids always wanted to trade me for their icky lunch.

my mom always had the variety pack of lunch-sized bags of chips. sometimes I would take my potato chips out of the bag and put them between my peanut butter and my jelly. my sandwich was almost always on white bread, and I used to love how it would stick to the roof of my mouth, especially when I had deviled ham sandwiches. I loved that meat spread product. now it kinda reminds me of catfood, but back then, yum-frickin’-ee.

and (oh, god, I’m old enough to say this) in my day, we didn’t have those baby carrots, or the readymade bags of already cut carrots and celery. oh no. my mom had to peel and cut them herself. and we also didn’t have zip-lock bags. she had to wrap the longer side of the baggie around the outside of the contents to “fold” in the freshness.

I got those pudding snacks…the ones not in plastic, but in the short little cans that you peel the lid off of. they probably stopped making them after so many children slashed their tongues on the lids. if pudding snacks were not on the menu, then it was zingers or hostess cupcakes. sometimes I even got foodsticks, which no one remembers, but I lived for those things.

my drink of choise choice was those small bottles of orange, purple, or red punch. remember those? they were super sugary, and the edge of the bottle was so sharp, you had to use a straw most of the time. the straw also helped to avoid the colorful mustache.

as we all know, lunch bags were much cooler than lunch boxes, once you hit third or fourth grade, but my mom didn’t give me those regular brown bags. if the bag was brown, she decorated it. sometimes I got cool ones with prints on them. I seem to remember yellow ones with smiley faces on them, but I might be making that up.

yes, my mom’s school lunches were boss. (note to self: look into starting a business where a mom-for-hire comes to your house every morning, makes you a delicious bag lunch, and hands it to you as you leave for work.)

as much as I hate to end this flashback to my childhood on a sad note, one not-so-happy lunch-related incident cannot be overlooked. it occured while I was in kindergarten. I was walking down the aisle on the bus getting ready to start my day in mrs. freeman’s class, when I tripped and dropped my lunchbox (cinderella, I think). it spilled open and my thermos rolled out. when I picked it up to put it back, safely behind its metal arm that snapped shut (which apparently wasn’t so strong afterall), it sounded like my punch was full of chipped ice. unfortunately, it wasn’t ice…it was shattered glass…crushed into tiny pieces, like my childhood bliss.