Early Lunch

”Think of an early memory of lunch and write about it.

You have six minutes … Go!”

That was our writing prompt for the class I’m currently taking. I told you my class/homework may appear here on occasion.

This was an IN CLASS assignment helping us draw on our memories and practice writing a Scene. This memory popped into my head. Honestly, I hadn’t thoughts about it for decades and decades, but there it was waiting to surface when prompted.

I instantly traveled all the way back to Elementary School. Isn’t it crazy how our memories store and recall our lives. It’s astounding, incredible, amazing! There I was in 2021 revisiting Adelphi Elementary walking to lunch and remembering details I didn’t even know I remembered. They weren’t forgotten: they’d been pushed to the back of the file cabinet.

This one made me smile and think …

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Every day, we marched in single file line. Most elementary kids know the drill. Finger over mouth, watch the person in front of you. Smells wafting through the corridors, beckoning our churning stomachs with every step.

She lived up the street, my neighborhood playmate; already the popular girl. Both of us carried the brown bag, but the contents were never the same. Her’s contained the best possible option; turkey sandwich, a bag of Fritoes and cookies. I coveted her lunch! Mine was lovingly packed, but contained many ingredients from the frig; Dad’s homemade venison bologna, cheese, leftovers, veggies (I hated the peppers. By lunchtime, everything tasted like green peppers.), and fruit. Seldom deli meat. No manufactured bag of goodies. If chips accompanied my lunch, they were parsed from a big bag into a waxed-paper-envelope-bag, often broken by lunchtime.

So many days, I wish I had Barbara’s appetizing, consistent array of edibles. Somehow her perfectly coiffed lunch seemed fitting for a “popular girl”.

How do we even think these things as young kids?

I’m not sure when the comparisons begin. I just remember them being real at my elementary lunch table. Never a word spoken, but we all knew.

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As I tapped into my memory, several scenes could have been written about lunch, but keeping to one scene was part of the exercise. Things can come tumbling out like rocks dodging you right and left. Sticking to one memory helps to focus; more details seem to surface.

Do you have an early lunch memory? I’d love to hear it!

Even in our earliest years we are learning about others and ourselves,

even from a Brown Bag!

Let a memory out! Share it!

Apparently I suffered from school lunch envy😉

Feel free to share with a friend(s).
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