Dreaded lunches, it’s that time of year

That time of year is swinging around again.

Oh, yes the daily grind of school, catching buses, homework, parent/teacher interviews and the most dreaded… lunch box dilemma.

I don’t know about your kids but the one that lives at my house is so picky not only about food, but about how fresh it is and does it need to be heated.

I always have “fresh” food in the house, but the kid means fresh as in just made this very second. He will not eat sandwiches, fruit, yogurt or any sort of reheat meal, because they are not fresh. Go figure. I am happy with a cheese sandwich and a banana.

So what does he eat? Usually nothing, which results in one cranky dude when he gets home from school, think of the Snickers commercial that says you’re not yourself when you are hungry. I remember my mother making my brother his lunch. It would be a six-inch high stack of sandwiches, a few apples or oranges and a cleaned out large sized mayo jar full of milk. This would all be packed in a large brown paper bag, the kind you used to get your groceries in.

I didn’t live far enough away from school to stay for lunch so I always had soup and a sandwich for lunch, which my mother had ready on the table for me. The few times that I ever took a lunch it was always in a brown paper bag, which was put into an old bread bag in case it was raining. These were the days long before backpacks and other school supply carriers.

The only hot lunch at school that I can remember is when we lived in Wales. I attended a school run by nuns, they were tough old gals let me tell you. The wooden yardstick was always in their hand and slapped on the desktop if a sound was made. Hot lunch was served in a huge hall with long wooden tables and benches running lengthwise in the room.

I don’t know how we didn’t all end up with hemorrhoids, as everything you sat on was a hard wooden seat. There was no choice of food, but if you didn’t eat what was put in front of you then you went hungry.

The schoolyard was fenced with very high wrought iron fencing with heavy concrete bottoms. We used to lean our little faces against the fence and stare longingly at the sweet shop across the road, Jones’s Sweets it was called.

I remember my father saying that it was a good thing that Lord Sandwich invented the sandwich and Lord Wellington the Wellington boots, or we would be eating our Wellies and wearing our sandwiches.

Good luck with the lunches, I know that I am going to need it… maybe I will just stock up on Snickers bars.