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.
16 comments ↓
my wife is a lunch lady, she works almost everyday for free. she was supposed to have a deal where if some kids wanted breakfast she would make it with her friend and get paid for that but it fell through. we could probably afford a palm pilot if she worked at a mall instead of being a lunch lady but it’s more important to feed kids. sometimes people make sacrifices for whats important. plus she gives the kids who are mean to our kids the burnt up pizza corner and brown french fries. she’s pretty cool that way.
I use to take dextrim(sp) so I wouldn’t be hungry during lunch time, but that was cause I didnt have lunch money.
It is funny now that I think about, cause I just had to ask my dad and he would of gave it to me, but then I would of spent it all on the simpson arcade game at walmart.
So, Brittney, you never told us, what exactly WAS Tuesday’s papery lump covered in gravy? Meat loaf or something? Sounds intriguing.
As for me, my mother never put much effort into bagging me a palatable lunch (we had no cafeteria). I don’t have too many vivid memories, but for Fruit Roll-Ups, and these little kinda-like-candy-but-somehow-better-for-you Fun Fruits, by the same company. Squishy and waxy. Like a rejected Jujyfruit, sort of.
For the main course, either a soggy PBJ on wheat with waaaaaaaaaay too much J (grape jelly gets lumpy), or a stray slice of Louis Rich turkey, the circular kind. The kind with kind of a rind. And half the time the meat was gristly, which I have a low tolerance for.
http://vasta.typepad.com/main/2004/12/salon_on_flickr.html
Salon on FlickrHard to believe that Flickr is still in beta, its that damn good. Why Some Women Kill for a BabyPostpartum depression may be more serious than some expect. What do you keep on you USB drive?Personally, I keep
links for 2004-12-21
The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Cover Click the faces Weta Takes on Narnia (categories: video) Elementary School Lunches Yeah, I remember that. I think that was the primary reason I ate lunch alone: so I wouldn’t be at the register…
I totally love to read your blog. God, that sounds so cheesy, but …well, it’s true :)
This is a wonderful entry.
As if kids don’t have enough things to feel self-conscious about, we have to stigmatize them in the school lunch program. School meals should be free to all kids and we can work out the payment plan on the parental level. I was a brown bagger but I would eat my lunch before the break and then play ball or get into fights with kids from the Aryan Nation or Muslim Brotherhood during lunch…or maybe that was in prison?
This brought back so many memories…our pizza day was on Thursday, and we had chocolate milk Mondays. That year, though, I was at a new school where the office was right by the lunchroom. Apparently, during lunch the kids were too loud for the office staff to work, so we were commanded to be silent while we ate. Anyone who talked had to stand against the wall. Nice. Oh, and I was on free lunch, too.
Lunch Cards
Brittney wrote about her memory of free and reduced lunches for school kids. Lunch cards. How could I have forgotten? Oh, yeah. I tend to bury bad memories. My middle school had different color cards for free and reduced lunches….
Our pizza day was Friday. Prolly cause of all the catholics up tri-state way. Holdover from pre-Vatican II days I guess.
Oddly at the company Xmas party last week, one of the free food offerings was what tasted remarkably like cafateria pizza.
Hey, Britt, i recently saw an online job offer in Ashland City, Tennessee. How far away is that from the ‘Boro, ‘proximately?
In my school, their was constant lament that we got soggy, undercooked tater tots EVERY DAY instead of french fries. I mean, REALLY. All they were good for was hucking.
Its entries like these, that keep me coming back…thanks and have a Merry Christmas!
P.S. I hate people that say, “see you next year!” around this time, cuz they know their not gonna see you for a week or so…Really bothers me.
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This goat rocks Exploded PCs — some really interesting thoughts here. What’s most interesting is that the problem of how to get the smaller, focused, specialised components to talk to each other and cooperate effectively is a hell of…
I remember Pizza Day was the limelight of my week. All the other days I would buy chips and a soda until they didnt allow us to do that anymore.
I didnt mind the hamburgers too much when I think about it.
I miss the simplicity of pizza day.
i think schools should have better lunches because at most schools you have the same lunce like every week or every two week and it just gets nasty after a while. ugh and school lunches come in bags and then they heat them up. i just think that school should have better lunches.
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