Brown Paper Packages and Hard Metal Boxes

Challenge #2 from {W}rite of Passage:

The Lunch Box Essay. Take fifteen minutes to write about your elementary school lunch.
Describe. Remember. Smell. Touch. Who is there? Where are you? What are you eating?

I went to a Catholic school. We didn't have hot lunch - had to bring your own. Depending on the weather, I remember sitting in the gym with the girls in my class (there were only seven of us) or out in the schoolyard. 

For the longest time, I remember carrying a metal (do they even make those anymore?) Care Bears lunchbox. The thermos normally held Kool-aid (milk was supplied for us); soup on cold winter days. There was always a sandwich (bologna or peanut butter & jelly), chips, sometimes sliced fruit or veggies, and something sweet. 

I remember trading cookies and whatnot for a tiny pinch of Andrea's Fruit Roll-Up or string cheese. 

When I was too old for Care Bears and the Ghostbusters plastic one that came later, there was the obligatory brown paper lunch bag - Mom would always write our names in her pretty script on the bags in marker so we could see it. Of course, there was always hell to pay when you forgot it at home and she had to run it back to the school!

Once a quarter, they would do a special lunch - hot dogs or hamburgers or pizza. Everything was ordered in advance and doled out by the room mothers at lunch. It's funny that we all went to lunch at the same time - squashing first graders all the way up through the eighth graders into the same small gym.

As much as you think it would, I don't remember the gym smelling like you would expect a gym to smell - old sweaty socks and rubber balls. It was my favorite room (except the tiny library).

In the gym, you could always count on to be sweating or freezing your ass off, depending on the time of year. There are days when I miss the white button-down shirts with the Peter Pan collars and the blue plaid jumpers that you had to wear shorts under so the boys didn't see your undies in gym. Once you hit sixth grade, the jumpers turned to just the blue plaid skirts. Funny thing was, even though it was a Catholic school, no one thought anything of the girls removing said skirts in front of the boys when you were getting ready for gym class.

Sigh. I miss those days.

I write of lunch, but there is so much more behind that. There were seven girls and eleven boys in my eighth grade graduating class. I can still name all of them - me, Andrea, Colleen, Maryalice, Mary, Lisa, Tara; Jimmy, Brad, Chris, Tom, Mike H, Mike M/K, Eric, Matt, Pat, Zeb, and William. 

Being the only girl on the co-ed soccer team. 

Basketball. 

Earning your ribbons. 

Being on patrol and an officer. 

Songleading in church when it was our class's turn and when the second graders completed their First Communion. 

Being the eighth grader picked to get to miss all of your classes for a day to help the Kindergarten class with their program and graduation. 

Getting to have class in the convent (nuns' home) or in the rectory (Father's home) where it was air conditioned when it became too unbearable in the classroom.

Great. Now you've made me want to take out pictures.

But I'll always remember Brown Paper Packages and Hard Metal Boxes...all with the smell of food.

Have a taste of these Lunches: