Tell me you go to a baseball game and you actually watch the game. If you are sitting there right now saying, ‘yeah I actually do that,’ than you my friend are a liar. Sure, you go to the baseball game to see your favorite teams and players perform, or maybe you go to the game to see the stadium, whatever. But after the first pitch and excluding a few big moments during the course of the game, you are there to do one thing and one thing only: people-watch.
Baseball offers this opportunity better than any other sport. Basketball has constant movement, and so does ice hockey for that matter. But since ice hockey doesn’t matter to anyone, we’ll just say that basketball has too much movement and leave it at that. Anyway, Football is no good for people watching. You’d think that with all the time the players are huddling, this would be a grand time to really get some P-watching in, but the trouble with football is that there are so few football games, 8 home games, and the tickets are so pricey that you really want to maximize your football viewing dollar and experience. The atmosphere is also too aggressive at a football game. Referees make you want to punch someone, you’re constantly coaching from the stands, and the drunk dude who has passed out on your shoulder sitting next to you has you in the odd place of feeling like an asshole if you wake him up, but angry because you can’t just be an asshole. After all, by the fourth quarter, you and the drunken prick on your shoulder have been through a lot together. His inevitably shirtless self has perspired sweat all up on your arms, and you now share a bond: herpes.
So football is no good, and if you think there are other sports you should bother paying to go see, then you my friend are:
1. A Nascar hick
2. A golf snob
3. Lame for having paid to go see tennis in person
Thus, we are left with baseball as the only true people-watching sports venue. When people-watching, there are some things and people you always see.
· People that look like celebrities: There’s always a guy that looks like someone famous. And if you’re us, all they need to have is one barely similar feature to a celeb to get a joke tagged to him. Fat dude with curly hair? That’s the guy from Lost. Old guy with a trimmed white beard and glasses? Wolf Blitzer. Guy wearing overalls? Super Mario. Really old lady wearing Red Sox gear? That’s Ted Williams’ mom. Also, throwing in some sort of joke with that dude is extremely important. Is there a cop at the stadium with a buzz cut and aviators? You know he’s looking for John Connor.
· The douche bag trying to start the wave himself- He comes to the game as a normal fan, but after dropping $180 for 6 beers, he’s in the tank and he’s got one thing on his mind, the wave. First off, the wave in itself is not a bad idea, it looks cool when it’s going around the stadium and you can just be lazy about it and throw up an arm. The problem with the wave is that it’s always at the worst time of the game. If your team is up by 8 runs in the 4th inning then hey make like a hurricane and get the waves flowin, but in the bottom of the 8th in a 3-2 game with the bases loaded and 2 outs, sit down and watch, these are the only times that your at a baseball game that you actually take a break from people watching to watch anyways, so lay off the wave.
Back to “wave guy” he runs to the bottom of his section and starts screaming and waving his arms, like he’s doing some sort of rain dance to get everyone out of their seats, a few other drunks join in and all the sudden he thinks he’s got something going, that is until those 8 people sit down and the section next door does nothing, so wave guy figures he cant just stand there, he’s gotta run down the aisle waving his arms to get everyone going. What sucks is, eventually this tool will get the wave going because people will feel bad for him if they don’t. “Look at that dude, he’s trying to start the wave. Alright I’ll give him a pity arm lift.” Pretty soon 8 people become 20 which become a row and eventually a section of pity wavers. The section to the left simply thinks that the people in section 128 are doing the wave, so now they join in. Now drunk wave guy, who has lost his shirt because he’s holding it in his hand as some sort of rallying instrument, thinks he’s the shit.
People inappropriately dressed for a ball game
· No suits- I understand that you are coming straight from work to go to the game, but come on, is it so much to ask to throw a t shirt into your briefcase or your car in the morning, you don’t even need to change out of your work shirt, just throw a T over it, show a little effort, that’s all we can ask. This is a baseball stadium, not your board room at 10am, loosen up a little, in the words of David Putty “you gotta support the team”
· No sideways hats – Under the age of 30? You can wear your hat backwards. But other than that, there should be no other way to dawn your cap. First off, it’s not even comfortable. You ever try putting a fitted hat on sideways? It’s like saying, “hey I want to put tons of pressure on the temples of my head.” Putting your hat on different ways says a lot about you. Resting your hat on your head facing toward the front with the bill in the air says:
1. My hat is too tight, but I have to wear it ‘cause I’m supporting my team
2. I yearn for the days of my youth
3. I was taught how to wear my hats from Fred McGriff in the Tom Emansky baseball drills video.
Wearing your hat fully on your head facing forward says:
1. I’m just a normal cat. Don’t worry about me.
2. I’m here to support the team on my head
3. I’m bald and hiding it
Wearing you hat backwards means:
1. This hat doesn’t look good if it’s forward
2. I’m still young enough to wear my hat backwards.
3. I want to be more aerodynamic
4. This hat+my bushy goatee indicate I’m a rapist.
Wearing your hat sideways means:
1. I’m a douche
2. I’m a Chauncey
3. I’m probably both.
· The guy with the expired player tee- I realize that you thought John Jaha was going to be the second coming of Babe Ruth when he hit a home run at the first game you saw him play and you instantly ran into the pro shop and bought a T shirt with his name on the back, or even worse bought a full out jersey, but can’t you admit to your mistake and throw down another $20 for a player that’s at least still on the team. Going to a game with an expired player T is still better than going in a suit, and yes teams do have a lot of turnover each season in this day and age but you know that guy is just pissed that he dropped 20 bucks on the T shirt or 70 on the jersey and too bitter about it to put the Shea Hillenbrand jersey away.
· The loud guy: Every stadium’s got about 100 at that day’s game. A good heckler can completely entertain you for the afternoon and can be worth the price of admission himself. A bad one can make a game totally irritating. What is worse than being out in the bleacher and hearing a guy argue balls and strikes. Heckle Manny Ramirez for looking like the Predator. That’s something we all can enjoy. But calling balls and strikes from over 500 feet away? Shut up.
· Generic statement to the players guy- Yes we know you want Manny to hit it here, but you yelling that to him isn’t going to do anything. The pitcher is trying to throw those strikes, you coaching him from the right field box isn’t going to do anything. And no Terry Francona wasn’t waiting on you to tell him to pull the pitcher before he did it, so stop annoying the people around you and keep it to yourself.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Phones and Friends
Where would we be without cell phones? You know that awful feeling when your battery dies and you're incommunicado for a few hours? Imagine having that feeling ALL THE TIME… yeah I couldn't either. Remember back to before we had cell phones? You had all of your friends phone numbers memorized and you can probably still remember them today. Remember calling their house and having to ask if they were home, which of course led to some small talk with their family. If they were out you had to wait till they got back home and then you had to rely on a family member to pass on the message to them, which was a dicey at best probability. If the friend’s mom took down the number, there was a 85% rate of return phone call; father 65%; Older sister 57%; Younger sister 34%; Older brother 23%; Younger brother 9%. Other than knowing that your friend will never call you back if the little bro picked up, the other thing that sucked about younger brother answering the phone was the horrible start to the convo that always ensued.
Brother: Hello?
You: Oh, hi Mrs. Johnson, is Brandon there?
Brother: it's Tyler.
You: sorry dude. (beat passes) is Brandon home?
It sucks because you know you've ruined this kid's day, and you know just what it was like to be confused for mom answering the phone at some point.
Back to the point, which is, we're lucky we are in our 20's so we didn't have to deal with the lack of a cell phone in our lives for too long. When you are younger you don't need a cell phone quite as much anyway because you'd see your friends all day at school and make plans with them to meet at the field to play football or come over to play some XBOX after school. But how did people carry out plans in the olden days?
If you wanted to meet up with someone on a Friday night, you had to tell them exactly the time and place? Bup that. What if the place you were going to sucked and you wanted to leave, or you were running late, or you wanted to give them a lame excuse and do something different? You couldn't. People must have just been waiting for each other, hoping that they showed when and where they said they would, all the time.
If you HAD to change something, you had to use—gulp—the pay phone. Remember that germ infested contraption? We 20-somethings are still old enough to have used those things. Does calling your parent in 8th grade to pick you up from the movies ring any bells? Remember dialing collect? You know you were way too cheap to throw in that quarter, so you billed your parents the $2.00 phone call instead. But you could dodge all this by beating the system. When that operator asked you to speak your name after the tone, you knew your name ceased to be (fill in name here) and suddenly it was, "Pick-us-up-at-5."
Anyway, not having a cell phone would make life inconvenient to say the least. But, it would pose an even bigger problem for two kinds of friends, Flakey Friend and Wasted Friend.
When you and Flaky Friend do finally meet up, it's almost a letdown because that means you've lost an internal bet. Now you have to hang out with FF, and that's no good either. Some laughs are had, but the only reason why you're friends in the first place is because you're always planning to see each other. When you actually see each other it's awkward. Ironically, it's the cell phone that gets you out of having to spend a whole evening with FF, so you can go hang out with one of your other friends, Wasted Friend, Sort-of Gay Friend, Sports Friend, or Movie Friend. But if you cannot get in touch with those people, it crosses your mind to turn to Work/School Friend, but there's no way you can take that step with them.
Wasted Friend: When you go out to the bar scene or a party one of your friends is bound to get wasted by the end of the night and you usually get a drunken phone call or you call him 15 times and finally find out that he's lying in the back yard staring at the sky. You go grab him to leave, but what if he didn't have a cell phone? Have you ever tried to track someone down whose phone is dead? Pretty impossible. Well if it’s 3 a.m. on a Friday and the last time you saw them was at the party on Rocky Rd and they're no where to be seen there anymore, they're in trouble. Short of roaming the streets with a flood light and yelling their name, getting in touch with them isn't happening, and now Wasted Friend has turned into Drunken Missing Friend. In fact, not only would you not be able to find them that night in this pre-cell phone world, you wouldn't even have proof of life until they make it back to their land-line phone and called you at your house. Sure they could have used a pay phone, but what are the chances that the waste case is going to have a few quarters in their pocket, or remember the numbers 800-COLLECT. He's up the creek without a cell phone, and he'll be there for a while.
Here’s just a list of the other friends that are in your phone's memory:
Sort-of Gay Friend (SGF): This friend is pretty self-explanatory. This is the guy that's never afraid of touching anyone. You're at the party and he starts putting his hands all up on your shoulder, before anyone has drunk anything. He's the guy that's not afraid of giving his other friends a pseudo-backrub. He's also the guy that looks good all the time. You've never seen him wearing anything but button-down shirts, never a dingy football jersey. He's the guy who wears the polo shirt to the baseball game.
Sports/Movie Friend: These friends essentially specialize in one thing, movies or sports. Movie friend is the one you always see movies with. You never do anything else with that friend. What's more, they'll see anything. The great thing about Movie Friend is you really don’t even need to get along with this person at all or have anything in common with them. You call or text them to asking what time they want to see the movie and the next time you see them is at the theater, where you talk about how excited you are to see the movie and how you read good or bad reviews about it. When you tell MF that your friend (really, you’re true friend) saw the movie and said it was good, MF is still skeptical because Peter Travers’ review in Rolling Stone said it was below average.
After the movie, conversation only stays on one topic: the movie. Including a conversation that goes something like this:
You: That was awesome
MF: yeah it was solid
You: my favorite part was when the pencil went in the guy’s head.
MF: yeah I liked the part when the commissioner came back to life.
(on and on that goes until you can think of no more parts of the film so that MF thinks of the last thing).
In reality, a stranger would suffice, but you don’t want to go to the movies by yourself, and that’s why you have movie friend.
Sports Friend is the guy you only talk about sports to. In fact, there might as well not be any other thing in the world besides sports. This is the friend that when you ask if they're dating someone, they say, "No, I've struck out." It's probably because they spend all their time adjusting their fantasy team. One trait sports fan always has is that he loves the high five. This friend is perfect to go to a sports bar with, or even have over to watch the game, but the range of sports guy pretty much runs out there. He's like a lefty specialist in baseball, really good at doing what you keep them around for, but if you keep them around too long, it’s only going to turn bad.
Work/School Friend: Wherever you spend most of your time (Work or Classes) there's always people who are designated friends for these places ONLY. You may talk to them all day, all week even, but when you leave on Friday, there's no way you're seeing that person until Monday morning. That's not because they're a bad person, rather because they're stuck in the work/school friend zone. Work is what you talk about with them because it is your common bond. "Did you see the new memo?" "How did you do on that test?" "Who's the new guy?" These are the questions you concern yourself with daily to break the ice with work friend. "How was your weekend?" is also very popular, because you know there's no way Work Friend knows how your weekend was because there's zero chance they were there too. You may divulge into other topics of course, television, movies, sports, etc, but those are all talked about at lunch or in shorter, "Cliff Notes" versions at the person's desk or at the infamous water cooler.
Long Drive Friend: This the friend you turn to when you're making that 2-hour drive from point A to B. You call them because when they answer they don’t say things like, "why are you calling?" They say things like, “I haven’t talked to you since Tuesday.” You don’t need a reason to call this friend other than that you are bored. Its a symbiotic relationship, because they call you when they are bored, too. These aren’t the friends that you call just to tell them one thing quickly, you have to text them in that situation, because when you dial up Long Drive Friend, your signing up for at least 20 min of talk time. These conversations can cover anything and everything and they usually do, you don’t really even care what you’re talking about as long as you keep on talking because anything is better than just driving. The only problem that you run into with Long Drive Friend is when you reach your destination. The conversation hasn’t come to a good ending point, because it never really does, it just goes on and on, you need to find that spot to pinch it off. You can try making crackling noises with your mouth or a piece of paper and say your losing service, you can outright hang up and pretend you lost service or you can sit at your destination and keep talking but the best and easiest way to do it is just throw in the "dude i just got to ____ i gotta run" and they'll understand because they know what they are there for and they just put in another good days work on the other end of the line.
The Thank God for Caller ID Friend: Before cell phones and caller ID this friend was the most annoying person on the planet, always calling you to do stuff that you didn’t want to do but you did because you couldn’t come up with a quick enough excuse. Well caller ID put an end to this friend, you might as well enter their name in your phone as Voicemail because that’s exactly where their call is going. Thanks to the combination of caller id and voice mail you will always be prepared for this friend. You let it go to voice mail and listen to them asking if you wanted to go to the carnival with them this weekend, then you compose yourself with a good excuse and call them back a few hours later. You tell them that you didn’t even listen to the voice mail, you were away from your phone and saw the missed call and called them right away, when they then ask if you want to go to the carnival, your excused is locked and loaded.
“No, man, sorry. I’ve gotta shine shoes this weekend… I know, it sounds weird, but it’s got to be done.”
These are inevitably some of the people taking up space on your phone's memory, which is a good thing, because otherwise you’d have to remember their info yourself. You’ve got better things to use your memory for, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex measured up to 42 feet.
Brother: Hello?
You: Oh, hi Mrs. Johnson, is Brandon there?
Brother: it's Tyler.
You: sorry dude. (beat passes) is Brandon home?
It sucks because you know you've ruined this kid's day, and you know just what it was like to be confused for mom answering the phone at some point.
Back to the point, which is, we're lucky we are in our 20's so we didn't have to deal with the lack of a cell phone in our lives for too long. When you are younger you don't need a cell phone quite as much anyway because you'd see your friends all day at school and make plans with them to meet at the field to play football or come over to play some XBOX after school. But how did people carry out plans in the olden days?
If you wanted to meet up with someone on a Friday night, you had to tell them exactly the time and place? Bup that. What if the place you were going to sucked and you wanted to leave, or you were running late, or you wanted to give them a lame excuse and do something different? You couldn't. People must have just been waiting for each other, hoping that they showed when and where they said they would, all the time.
If you HAD to change something, you had to use—gulp—the pay phone. Remember that germ infested contraption? We 20-somethings are still old enough to have used those things. Does calling your parent in 8th grade to pick you up from the movies ring any bells? Remember dialing collect? You know you were way too cheap to throw in that quarter, so you billed your parents the $2.00 phone call instead. But you could dodge all this by beating the system. When that operator asked you to speak your name after the tone, you knew your name ceased to be (fill in name here) and suddenly it was, "Pick-us-up-at-5."
Anyway, not having a cell phone would make life inconvenient to say the least. But, it would pose an even bigger problem for two kinds of friends, Flakey Friend and Wasted Friend.
Your flaky friend is always sending you a text 20 min after you were supposed to meet up saying how their back is itchy so they can't make it tonight, but definitely next time! And you know that is bull but it's your flaky friend, so you half expect it anyways. Somehow this person is your friend, even though you never see them. Well, without cell phones Flaky Friend must have not existed. After all, Flaky Friend and you get by purely on this form of "I can't make it" communication. This is what's holding the friendship together with scotch tape.
When you and Flaky Friend do finally meet up, it's almost a letdown because that means you've lost an internal bet. Now you have to hang out with FF, and that's no good either. Some laughs are had, but the only reason why you're friends in the first place is because you're always planning to see each other. When you actually see each other it's awkward. Ironically, it's the cell phone that gets you out of having to spend a whole evening with FF, so you can go hang out with one of your other friends, Wasted Friend, Sort-of Gay Friend, Sports Friend, or Movie Friend. But if you cannot get in touch with those people, it crosses your mind to turn to Work/School Friend, but there's no way you can take that step with them.
Wasted Friend: When you go out to the bar scene or a party one of your friends is bound to get wasted by the end of the night and you usually get a drunken phone call or you call him 15 times and finally find out that he's lying in the back yard staring at the sky. You go grab him to leave, but what if he didn't have a cell phone? Have you ever tried to track someone down whose phone is dead? Pretty impossible. Well if it’s 3 a.m. on a Friday and the last time you saw them was at the party on Rocky Rd and they're no where to be seen there anymore, they're in trouble. Short of roaming the streets with a flood light and yelling their name, getting in touch with them isn't happening, and now Wasted Friend has turned into Drunken Missing Friend. In fact, not only would you not be able to find them that night in this pre-cell phone world, you wouldn't even have proof of life until they make it back to their land-line phone and called you at your house. Sure they could have used a pay phone, but what are the chances that the waste case is going to have a few quarters in their pocket, or remember the numbers 800-COLLECT. He's up the creek without a cell phone, and he'll be there for a while.
Here’s just a list of the other friends that are in your phone's memory:
Sort-of Gay Friend (SGF): This friend is pretty self-explanatory. This is the guy that's never afraid of touching anyone. You're at the party and he starts putting his hands all up on your shoulder, before anyone has drunk anything. He's the guy that's not afraid of giving his other friends a pseudo-backrub. He's also the guy that looks good all the time. You've never seen him wearing anything but button-down shirts, never a dingy football jersey. He's the guy who wears the polo shirt to the baseball game.
Sports/Movie Friend: These friends essentially specialize in one thing, movies or sports. Movie friend is the one you always see movies with. You never do anything else with that friend. What's more, they'll see anything. The great thing about Movie Friend is you really don’t even need to get along with this person at all or have anything in common with them. You call or text them to asking what time they want to see the movie and the next time you see them is at the theater, where you talk about how excited you are to see the movie and how you read good or bad reviews about it. When you tell MF that your friend (really, you’re true friend) saw the movie and said it was good, MF is still skeptical because Peter Travers’ review in Rolling Stone said it was below average.
After the movie, conversation only stays on one topic: the movie. Including a conversation that goes something like this:
You: That was awesome
MF: yeah it was solid
You: my favorite part was when the pencil went in the guy’s head.
MF: yeah I liked the part when the commissioner came back to life.
(on and on that goes until you can think of no more parts of the film so that MF thinks of the last thing).
In reality, a stranger would suffice, but you don’t want to go to the movies by yourself, and that’s why you have movie friend.
Sports Friend is the guy you only talk about sports to. In fact, there might as well not be any other thing in the world besides sports. This is the friend that when you ask if they're dating someone, they say, "No, I've struck out." It's probably because they spend all their time adjusting their fantasy team. One trait sports fan always has is that he loves the high five. This friend is perfect to go to a sports bar with, or even have over to watch the game, but the range of sports guy pretty much runs out there. He's like a lefty specialist in baseball, really good at doing what you keep them around for, but if you keep them around too long, it’s only going to turn bad.
Work/School Friend: Wherever you spend most of your time (Work or Classes) there's always people who are designated friends for these places ONLY. You may talk to them all day, all week even, but when you leave on Friday, there's no way you're seeing that person until Monday morning. That's not because they're a bad person, rather because they're stuck in the work/school friend zone. Work is what you talk about with them because it is your common bond. "Did you see the new memo?" "How did you do on that test?" "Who's the new guy?" These are the questions you concern yourself with daily to break the ice with work friend. "How was your weekend?" is also very popular, because you know there's no way Work Friend knows how your weekend was because there's zero chance they were there too. You may divulge into other topics of course, television, movies, sports, etc, but those are all talked about at lunch or in shorter, "Cliff Notes" versions at the person's desk or at the infamous water cooler.
Long Drive Friend: This the friend you turn to when you're making that 2-hour drive from point A to B. You call them because when they answer they don’t say things like, "why are you calling?" They say things like, “I haven’t talked to you since Tuesday.” You don’t need a reason to call this friend other than that you are bored. Its a symbiotic relationship, because they call you when they are bored, too. These aren’t the friends that you call just to tell them one thing quickly, you have to text them in that situation, because when you dial up Long Drive Friend, your signing up for at least 20 min of talk time. These conversations can cover anything and everything and they usually do, you don’t really even care what you’re talking about as long as you keep on talking because anything is better than just driving. The only problem that you run into with Long Drive Friend is when you reach your destination. The conversation hasn’t come to a good ending point, because it never really does, it just goes on and on, you need to find that spot to pinch it off. You can try making crackling noises with your mouth or a piece of paper and say your losing service, you can outright hang up and pretend you lost service or you can sit at your destination and keep talking but the best and easiest way to do it is just throw in the "dude i just got to ____ i gotta run" and they'll understand because they know what they are there for and they just put in another good days work on the other end of the line.
The Thank God for Caller ID Friend: Before cell phones and caller ID this friend was the most annoying person on the planet, always calling you to do stuff that you didn’t want to do but you did because you couldn’t come up with a quick enough excuse. Well caller ID put an end to this friend, you might as well enter their name in your phone as Voicemail because that’s exactly where their call is going. Thanks to the combination of caller id and voice mail you will always be prepared for this friend. You let it go to voice mail and listen to them asking if you wanted to go to the carnival with them this weekend, then you compose yourself with a good excuse and call them back a few hours later. You tell them that you didn’t even listen to the voice mail, you were away from your phone and saw the missed call and called them right away, when they then ask if you want to go to the carnival, your excused is locked and loaded.
“No, man, sorry. I’ve gotta shine shoes this weekend… I know, it sounds weird, but it’s got to be done.”
These are inevitably some of the people taking up space on your phone's memory, which is a good thing, because otherwise you’d have to remember their info yourself. You’ve got better things to use your memory for, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex measured up to 42 feet.
Monday, September 29, 2008
...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.
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