Monday was pizza day. I looked very forward to Monday’s pizza lunch in the fifth grade. I anticipated the cracker-like crust topped with a layer of red, then a layer of ground meat all topped with waxy, snot-colored cheese. It was a scrumptuous treat compared to Tuesday’s papery lump covered in gravy or Thurday’s stiff stroganoff. I would eat my pizza with a fried potato side of some kind and drink with it chocolate milk. This was my school’s example of balanced nutrition for a growing 9-year-old girl.
School lunch cost $1 in fifth grade, in 1986, though that wasn’t what it cost for me. I was on reduced lunches, the discount meal program for kid’s whose parent or parents had a low income. My lunch cost 40 cents. Some kids had free lunches. At least, I thought, I wasn’t a free lunch kid.
However, no one but me knew the difference unless I told them. Once at the end of the line, tray full of mysterious sustenance, both reduced and free lunch kids used a punch card as their currency at the register. Having a punch card quickly identified you as a Kmart-clothes-wearing poor kid. I would keep my card in my sleeve if I was wearing long sleeves and produce it for the cashier at the last minute. I kept my reduced lunch status as well-hidden as possible. I wildly envied the kids that paid the whole dollar for their pizza and french fries and chocolate milk in cash. But not as much as I envied the truly cool kids–the kids who brought their lunch from home.
Of all the kids who brought their lunch from home I remember Ellie
Anne Gore’s lunch the most. Ellie Anne Gore’s lunch came in a crisp
brown paper bag folded over neatly one time. Ellie Anne’s name was
always printed on the bag in colored pencil and all capital letters.
Each letter was a different color, and her mother, a school teacher,
would draw little balls at the tip of each ‘l’ or ‘n’. She dressed
Ellie Anne in lacy dresses with layers of tulle underneath and fastened
homemade ribbon clips into her freshly hot-rolled hair every picture day.
Inside that perfect brown bag was a red, sandwich-sized Tupperware
container holding a turkey sandwich on white bread, crusts neatly
removed, topped with a thick, bright, yellow slice of cheese and two
layers of crisp iceberg lettuce. The sandwich was cut into four
triangular pieces, the way I liked it best. After eating her sandwich
she would pull out a tiny bag of store-bought potato chips, often
Moore’s brand. She would eat each item in her brown paper bag one at a time,
keeping each thing hidden until the other was completely
eaten. After her final potato chip she’d fish out a bag of
M&M’s. I was so jealous that Ellie Anne got to have candy every
day for lunch. Not a fun-sized bag, either. A full, brown bag of
plain M&M’s that she would rip at one corner, removing each
chocolate piece by piece, poking the candy into her mouth with one
finger. Then she’d chew slowly, always savoring each one.
Ellie Anne never shared her M&M’s, nor did I ever ask for a piece of her candy.
It is funny how little I knew as a 9-year-old about money and how
buying things actually works. Apparently I was completely incapable of
accurately estimating large numbers of people. I would stand in
the lunch line, cleverly masking my tell-tale punch card in my sleeve,
wondering how much lunch ladies made every day. I estimated that there
were probably one hundred kids who bought lunch at my elementary school
every day (even though the actual number was more like 500) and that if
each lunch cost $1, then that meant they made $100 a day! I forgot to
subtract the loss of revenue caused by free and reduced lunch kids like
myself, but nevermind that. Waiting in the lunch line on Pizza Monday one day eighteen years ago, I wanted
to become a lunch lady. Because $100 a day sounded like as much money
as anybody would ever need. And I would be extra nice to the punch
card children. Maybe even throw in a free bag of M&M’s from time
to time.