This week's {W}rite of Passage Challenge is to write about your elementary school lunch box.
Mine was a metal Scooby Doo lunch box with a thermos inside. I don't recall it when it was brand new; all my memories include the sharp tang of rust mingled with whatever I was having for lunch that day.
This was in the days when Ziploc bags were an extravagant luxury, so my mother would pack all my food in the type of sandwich bag that simply tucked in on itself. The scent memory I remember the strongest was pickle juice that leaked out of the bag and intensified the usual rusty odor of the lunch box.
Then there were the bananas. I loved them then and I love them now, but they made all the food in my lunch box taste banana-y in a most unwelcome way.
I understand now why parents are willing to buy pre-cut bags of apples and other fruit for kids' lunches. I almost never ate my apple or any other healthy dessert in my lunch, much preferring the Twinkies.
The default sandwich spread back then was peanut butter and my mother did not limit her imagination when it came to pairing it with other things. There were various flavors of jam and jelly, of course. Sometimes she'd make peanut butter and honey sandwiches. My favorite to this day: peanut butter and Velveeta. I wish I had one right now.
It's been a long time since those days and the memories of who ate with me and where we sat at lunch have dimmed to irretrievability. All that remains from back then is the knowledge that it's never a good idea to pack a banana in with a sandwich.
Here's what everyone else had to say on the subject:
