Like the Corners of My Mind

My SIL, Hannah, posts memories called "Flashback Friday" on her blog and she shares funny stories of what it was like for her growing up or milestones in her life. In tribute to her, and since I will probably forget to post this by Friday, I am sharing this memory of mine for those who read this blog to laugh at. I was reminded of this by reading Monica's post on food aversions and conversions and it made me remember the horror that was school lunch for me.

My mother was deeply against buying us hot lunch at school. She felt that $.85 a day was too pricey and that we could pack our lunches cheaper with food from home. Despite our protests and pleadings that all the other cool kids bought hot lunch, she insisted that we "brown bag" it or in our case "Playmate" it. For those of you who don't know what a Playmate is (other than the girl with bunny ears) it is a small personal cooler put out by the Igloo company. In the early 90s when I was forced to start Playmating it my mom bought us all matching "Little Playmates" which where even smaller versions of the Playmate cooler with fuschia and teal accents (as I said it was the early 90s). Playmate was such an ironic name for them since they were in no way a playmate and certainly did not attract them.

In our Little Playmate there was a Rubbermaid sandwich container, drink container and ice pack. There was also usually room to store an apple, pretzels or whatever other snack item we could scrounge up when we packed our lunch five minutes before the bus arrived. Since my first day of first grade my mother never packed my lunch. She claimed that she was teaching me to be self-sufficient, but really I think she wanted to sleep in a few more minutes. My first grade teacher actually brought this up at parent-teacher conference after she noticed some of my creative choices for lunches, but my mother stood by her decision and insisted that I continue Playmating it for myself.

During one school vacation over Christmas break, I forgot to empty my Playmate and the drink container stunk so much that it had to be thrown away. Instead of buying me a new drink container which were available at Wal-Mart and several other fine retailers, my mother wanted me to live with the consequence of my negligence and replaced the plastic Rubbermaid drink container with a Ball canning jar complete with metal lid. As cruel as I think this was at least my mother was consistent and made the other kids do the same when they ruined their drink container. Not only did the canning jar make the already bulky Playmate heavier it was difficult to casually drink out of a canning jar at the lunch table. I would usually drink the whole jar while the other kids were going through the hot lunch line so they wouldn't see me tipping back a 16-ounce glass jar when they were daintily sipping out of a milk carton.

The other logistical problem with the Playmate came on the bus ride to and from school. School bus seats are built to fit two sixty pound kids with normal backpacks and the aisles are only wide enough to walk single file. When you are a large kid to begin with and then are carrying a boxy cooler that weighs ten pounds getting seated on the bus becomes tricky. Most days my brother and I would suck it up and sit together with our Playmates instead of forcing another hot-lunch-child to be embarrassed with us.

Looking back on it I still laugh that my mom, being a middle school teacher herself, sent us to school with dorky Playmate coolers knowing we would be ridiculed. I guess she wanted us to get a tough skin early on to prepare us for real life. The funny thing is, as soon as I could get a job when I was fifteen, I used that money to buy hot lunch and never Playmated it again. Sorry for the really random post but when Monica asked for comments on food aversions I couldn't help but think of how much I really hate lunch food (sandwiches in particular) to this day.