Every morning as I enter the kitchen, two lunch pails sit open mouthed and hungry, glaring at me from my flat stovetop. We are not friends.
I haven’t even put the kettle on for coffee yet and they mock me, those designer cooler bags free of phthalates, lead, PVC, BPA and a host of other consonants pushed together to form scary concepts of harmful chemicals that I don’t pretend to understand, much less wish too.
This year I got wise and instituted the “make-your-own-lunch” campaign. My children are old enough now to be independent lunch makers, with some supervision of course. In other words, I give them just enough rope to run to the yogurt and fruit choices, but am quick to step on the rope when they try to tell me Cheezies and cold hot dogs are adequate representations of food groups. Um, nice try. Though, to be honest, if they tossed in a couple of carrots and promised to let me drink my coffee in peace, I might acquiesce.
So, despite knowing that junk food replaced with nutritious options will lead to returned food and clever excuses like, “we don’t get enough time to eat that, so I ate the cookies first,” I still insist on at least a few real food choices. You remember real food, right? It’s crazy, but sometimes I buy the fruit that actually grows outside, in gardens and on trees. Who knew that fruit doesn’t come in a jelly formation of Sponge Bob Square Pants? I did.
Don’t even get me started on overpriced yogurt that comes in a tube. Who wants to suck yogurt out of a flimsy tube? Gross. Or worse, you can fall for the yogurt in a dish that squishes. What? To my children, that is the most brilliant ergonomic design in food since the Eggo waffle. Ugh.
And you just know that somewhere, in the lunchroom at school, you are being judged on your parenting skills based on the selection of reusable, litterless and compostable food choices. I remember the teacher who once teased me for buying Rice Krispie bars wrapped in foil. Apparently I am supposed to make my own from scratch. Everybody is a critic.
This is why the lunch pails stare at me with disapproval as I stumble about the kitchen, a daze of foul temper and big hair swathed in flannel. They know that I am about to attempt the ultimate challenge: the mathematical equation that is the stuffing of the lunch pail. I think the skill of packing a cooler bag with round, square and rectangular dishes should be on a high school geometry exam.
It is a mystery to me why the designers of lunch pails and food storage containers have yet to realize that working together could be the start of world peace. Have any of them ever tried to pack an adequate amount of nutrition, with the right balance of crap food into a zippered lunch tote? I vote no. A mesh bag for the spoons that never come home does nothing to help me, people.
Eventually, the lunch bag’s big mouth is stuffed and shut tight, with bulging sides that make it look like a mutant purse. I don’t care. Let the lunchroom monitors judge me. Let the kids get teased because their apple is actually an apple. I hope their tuna sandwich reeks.
Bring on pizza days.