This weeks challenge issued by Mrs. Flinger at (W)rite of Passage is to write about our school lunch.

I don’t remember the various metal lunch boxes that I carried throughout my elementary school years. It seems insignificant now considering the post traumatic stress I’ve suffered due to unG-Dly awful lunches. Although, if I think about it, those old lunch boxes with thermos included, some are collectors items that could carry a pretty penny. I wonder if my parents saved any of them. I seem to remember a Scooby-Doo lunch box as well as a red Peanuts lunch box. I’m sure there were many others. But, I digress…

What I do remember most were those lunches tucked away inside that box, right next to the metal thermos of lukewarm milk.

Made with love? Maybe. Made from the hand of someone who wanted to be making her darling children lunches? I think not, my friends. I think not.

Ah, the good old days of homemade elementary school lunches. Brings back memories. I won’t go into detail regarding the type of memories this brings back because my mom is an avid reader of my blog. Hi Mommy.

I was the kid that no one would even consider trading a single lunch item with. Because, quite honestly, what I had to trade usually consisted of a very mashed cream cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I also had a few carrot slices, an apple or banana and a couple of chips. Sometimes my mom would go all crazy and pack a couple cookies or a turkey sandwich. But usually not. And really? What kid in their right mind would give up their Chip Ahoy for 3 stinking celery slices?

The thing I recall most distinctly were my sandwiches. They were always cut in half with strawberry jelly oozing out of all sides. Sometimes peanut butter, back when the peanut allergies weren’t so rampant causing schools to be tree nut free. Other times, cream cheese. And there were always tiny slices missing. Like my mom had to have a taste to make sure it wasn’t poisonous.

Inevitably, the banana or apple, or whatever extremely heavy piece of fruit that was packed alongside it, wasn’t alongside it at all. It seemed to always get lonely and roll over on top of the poor little sandwich, thus squishing it flat and making that jelly spurt out all over the inside of the bag. Causing a sticky and embarrassing mess for me.

How has this affected me, you wonder. Well, I thank you for you extreme concern. You see, I am grown. I have children of my own. I too, like my Mother before me, pack lunches for my offspring.

I overcompensate for the lack of a decent lunch making parent that I grew up with.

My goal. My purpose, every night as I am packing lunches. All five fricking lunches. Is to give my children the lunch to make their friends envious.

Is my mission working? Are my kids lunches the envy of the tri-state area? Well, not exactly. Because, after 9 years or so of making 4-6 lunches (including my husbands) a night. I’m so sick of doing this that they get peanut butter sandwiches WITH the crusts. And sometimes, if they are very lucky, they’ll get a couple cookies and a turkey sandwich.

One major difference between the lunches my Mom used to make me and the lunches I make for my children is, I use brown paper bags and juice boxes.

(No moms were hurt in the writing of this post)