Hot Lunch

Today Lea Ann mentioned how she forgot to bring her lunch to work and would have to get a Hot Lunch, like in elementary school. This opened a floodgate of other forgotten abuses at the hands of my cruel parents. In my childhood, a hot lunch was a special treat, something to anticipate all morning, all week even, culminating in an ecstatic pushing of a tray in the line of Normal Kids and then the consequent feigned disgust at the fare, when secretly I was overjoyed at the watery spaghetti and lime jello, clutching my chocolate milk in hand. Because my family was too poor for hot lunch, I rarely had this pleasure. I'd carefully line up the dented fork in the appropriate slot on my chipped tray as I slid it along the track, accumulating little bowls like I saw my grandparents do at Luby's every Sunday. The tray always seemed heavier than I was, and I lived in morbid fear of dropping it on the way to my table. As it was, I was socially crippled by my coke-bottle glasses, permed-by-mother-in-the-kitchen hair, and diminutive stature ("Are you a midget?" being a common query). As I timidly shuffed to my table, I knew Everybody Was Watching Me, and my tray grew heavier and heavier until I was sure I was going to buckle under the weight and end up with food all over me and get called 'Gravy Girl' the rest of my elementary career. Or worse, Gravy Midget. When I finally sat, I'd breath a sigh of relief and admire my tepid salisbury steak with pride. Instead of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches my parents normally packed--grape jelly soaking through generic white bread, rendering the entire sandwich sticky and inedible--I had Real Food. Usually I survived on trade-value alone, offering my ziploc of doritos in exchange for the luckier kid's little debbie cakes. Prepacked food--even more than Hot Lunch--was a sign of love: I could tell whose parents were the most caring, the most loving, based on who gave fruit roll-ups and juice boxes to their precious offspring. My parents obviously hated me, given the apple smashing my soggy sandwich and the helping of crumbs from the bottom of the chip bag. I don't know even know why they bothered to procreate.

Saturday at Aiden's first birthday party, I snuck a capri-sun from the Kid's Cooler, a drink that still makes me feel Super Rich when I get it. As I sucked the little silver bag flat, then blew it out to watch it expand, I took infinite satisfaction in the fact that I'm Officially There. And I can eat a twinkie WHENEVER I WANT.