Lonely Lunches
Anne Lamott in her book, "Bird by Bird" suggests that we write about school lunches when we get stuck on what to write.
I remember paper bag lunches with sandwiches: bologna, salami ( only hard salami was good - the other kinds sucked ), peanut butter (creamy Jif only) & jelly, ham and cheese (American cheese only). I got so sick and tired of these sandwiches that to this day I don't like to eat cold sandwiches. Of course, if you heat up any of these sandwiches it suddenly sounds much better to me. Go figure.
And, guess what we did in those days...we kept our sack lunches in our lockers until lunch! We could have died from salmonella poisoning! That bacteria had so much time to ferment.
Oh, and then there's the dreaded lunch hour when all my shyness & insecurity came out in full force. I was the guy who observed but didn't interact. I didn't know how to be normal. I desperately wanted to fit in. A couple people had some mercy on me and were friendly. Lunches were very lonely times. Very lonely times.
Then, we moved to a house just 2 blocks from my high school. I went home and ate lunch! No more cold sandwiches. No more lonely lunches. Now I had company - "The Young & the Restless."
Can I have a mulligan for my high school years?
I remember paper bag lunches with sandwiches: bologna, salami ( only hard salami was good - the other kinds sucked ), peanut butter (creamy Jif only) & jelly, ham and cheese (American cheese only). I got so sick and tired of these sandwiches that to this day I don't like to eat cold sandwiches. Of course, if you heat up any of these sandwiches it suddenly sounds much better to me. Go figure.
And, guess what we did in those days...we kept our sack lunches in our lockers until lunch! We could have died from salmonella poisoning! That bacteria had so much time to ferment.
Oh, and then there's the dreaded lunch hour when all my shyness & insecurity came out in full force. I was the guy who observed but didn't interact. I didn't know how to be normal. I desperately wanted to fit in. A couple people had some mercy on me and were friendly. Lunches were very lonely times. Very lonely times.
Then, we moved to a house just 2 blocks from my high school. I went home and ate lunch! No more cold sandwiches. No more lonely lunches. Now I had company - "The Young & the Restless."
Can I have a mulligan for my high school years?
posted by Kevmo at 9:46 PM
3 Comments:
You get just one mulligan - think it over!
Great post, Kevmo. I hated the cafeteria too. It was a battlefield.
and we didn't die from eating hours old mayonnaise!
It's a miracle (whip)
harrrrrrrrrrrr
I had to go look up the word "mulligan" - I was kicking myself for having such a small vocabulary, but then I got the definitions...
1)A golf shot not tallied against the score, granted in informal play after a poor shot especially from the tee.
2)American jazz saxophonist and arranger known for his improvisational style and for introducing a jazz quartet without a piano as a standard group arrangement.
3)n : Irish version of burgoo
Now I don't feel so bad! Except I have to go look up the word "burgoo"...
BTW, I would have ate lunch with you, except I'm a girl and that probably wouldn't have been very cool...
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