...Lunch!

The Following is a combined effort about lunch...

What was the best part of the school day? Gym? Math? Science? Strategically walking the long way so you could see the hot chick between classes? Or was it when you would fart on your way to your next class leaving those behind you in the dust? We all enjoyed one of those, but the time of day that everyone loved was lunch. Even in the working world lunch is by far the best time of the day, well other than when you leave. It combines two things that are great on their own, and even better together, food and a break from the day. It’s an escape from the mundane, a chance to socialize without looking over your back, and finally a chance to EAT. But back to school lunch.

As great as lunch was, some lunches were no doubt better than others, you know you would have a good day if you walked out of the house in the morning dawning one of these in your brown paper bag:

• Left over pizza: How key were the days you’d open up the brown sack and out would come a giant triangle tin foil contraption? You know you were the envy of everyone sitting around you. You could just look at them and think, “what is that Jimmy, another PB&J? HAR HAR HAR HAR.” Pizza being cold is still better than it being warm by the way.

• Lunchables: Pst, how tasty were Lunchables. You know those little round pieces of processed ham or turkey were just what your junk-food craving body needed. How can you go wrong with crackers, cheese, and round slices of meat? You couldn’t go wrong, especially when you get to the Capri-Sun and reese’s peanut butter cup. Capri-Sun has completely cornered the school lunch drink market. You know it’s just because it’s in that silver bag as opposed to that lame ol’ box. On a side note: How annoying were the dickheads who put the straw on the wrong end? Or if you were putting the straw in and due to your death grip around that bag to get some leverage for the straw, 1/3 of your Drink would inevitably fly out of your straw on the initial piercing and onto your “Nike Basketball” t-shirt.

• Lunch money: where else can $2 get you, a salad, calzone, and milk? But inevitably you’d bup the $0.25 milk and you’d borrow a buck from someone for a Gatorade or soda. And despite your best intentions, how often would you end up turning to the Spicy Chicken sandwich with the fries instead of the healthy salad. You always knew you’d made a mistake, cuz right around 12:30 your stomach, who normally was accustomed to seeing a solid turkey sandwich, and suddenly was bombarded by spicy chicken sandwiches.

• Ice Cream – if you happened to have extra money, tell me you weren’t buying that drumstick in the vending machine. The ice cream sandwich for 50 cents was solid too. But no ice cream product from the age of 12-17 beat, The Choco-Taco. It had everything the drumstick had, only without nuts. Furthermore, it’s taco shape allowed for better handling and less spillage.

• Handisnacks in your lunch- No Matter what, either you, or one of the people you ate lunch with was having some flippin handisnacks thrown in there. How key was that little red spreader. Licking that thing with cheese on it was probably the smoothest surface ever created by mankind. And you know you were conserving that cheese to do just that. Those first 3 crackers were lightly, I mean lightly cheese flavored. But saving that cheese for the 4th and final cracker was so important. And then saving a little bit just for dessert was divine.
  

The Perils of school lunch: A reminder, that even good things can be bad...

• Soggy PB&J- Is there anything worse then opening your lunch wondering what you have and seeing the purple stain through the other side of the bread? I wouldn’t know because I refused to bring PB&J for lunch for that very reason, as much as I love PB&J I have to eat it within 27 seconds of the jelly touching the bread, soggy bread in general is unappetizing. Soggy purple bread? Might as well be mold. Now your mom might have been smart and put the peanut butter on both sides of the bread, but even still the jelly finds a way through, and just as there is nothing better than biting into a fresh PB&J on some nice white bread there is nothing worse than biting into a PB&J on one side of nice white bread accompanied with a side of wet purple bread. Disgusting. And what’s more, what about if you brought a can of something in your lunch. You know that sandwich is being curved right around that can. That’s not a sandwich, it’s shaped like the letter “U.”

• A bad sandwich in general: You know what held up pretty well through the rigors of the school day? The Kraft singles cheese slices. Unless you were at first lunch (lunch at 10:40 remember that?) you had no chance of that cheese not being the worst thing ever. Same with the lettuce. Crunchy lettuce became wilted and flimsy. And don’t get me started on the tomato, AKA the sandwich killer. Unless that tomato is eaten right away on the ‘wich, forget about it. That’s as bad as the jelly through the bread. It’s also just bad for the sandwich. A bad piece of tomato means everything is gone, and what I mean is everything is sliding out at the first bite.

• The same sandwich you’ve had for 8 years running: Despite your best efforts to tell your parents that you’re feeling a different meat for lunch next week, it was like clockwork that they return with the same meat product…they’ve brought home for the past 7 years. How tired did you get of your ______ sandwich. For the entirety of elementary school, it was honey ham+cheese for me. For middle school and most of high school, it was turkey. Except for a rare tuna sandwich (when there was no go-to meat), I was being stuck with one of those. By year’s end, even someone who loves sandwiches (and we love sandwiches) hated those sandwiches.

• No Lunch at all- Your rushing around in the morning to get everything ready for school, you run out the door and just catch the bus and you get to school, open your backpack and see a giant void in your life, YOU FORGOT YOUR LUNCH. Does it get any worse? No, even if that lunch contained a couple slices of wet purple bread you could at least pawn it off on the fat kid for his apple or something, you have nothing, nada, zilch. You might as well be homeless as well ‘cause you'll be harassing people at lunch time, going around to the tables, trying to find people who'll loan you a quarter, a nickel, a pickle or even a single Pringle, because you lost the right to not stop once you pop. In high school you could find a financial backer, someone to loan you that $2, or even someone who owed you money and you can cash in from them. But in elementary school, fa-get-about-it, no one has more than the 50 cents they're gonna spend on ice cream in their pockets in elementary school, you are going hungry that day, no if ands or buts about it.