Dad's Atrocious School Lunches and the Cherry Tomato Disaster

School lunches were always miserable for me. Especially when dad made them. This was coupled with the fact that I detested my lunchbox - a Barbie one that was given to me as a special gift. It was special alright, with its hard plastic and royal blue shell and a big Barbie sticker image covering the front. Yes Barbie with her blonde hair, plastered on grin and unimaginable endowments. The thermos was tall with strange mirrored glass on the inside. When you screwed off the top, it became the cup. If you dropped the thermos, the mirrored glass would shatter into a million pieces. It was kind of like this, except it was royal blue, and the box itself was hard plastic, not vinyl...

The contents of my lunch varied little from day to day and would be a sad combination of: cherry tomatoes, a Laura Secord pudding (the kind in the metal tin wrapped in yellow paper with pull back lid), a banana, a mini dessert such as a Wagon Wheel, or a Twinkie and of course the main course, which consisted of a sandwich on white bread with butter. We didn’t use Mayonnaise for fear it would go rancid by midday for lack of refrigeration and poison us. I went to Britannia Heights Separate School (now renamed JL Jordan) and we kept our lunch pails in a rolling wall of cubby holes. Other girls had the same lunch box as me, and on many occasions I was tempted to “accidently” snatch one of their lunchboxes and devour what treasures were inside. It HAD to be better than my daily lunchtime letdown. 

The Queen of fabulous lunches was my friend Danielle. Her mom was very creative and would do cool things like boil water, toss some hot dogs inside which would magically be ready once the lunch bell rang. She also brought hot soup in her thermos and potato chips for recess. I would report this back to dad, and he would listen, and then probably secretly curse Danielle’s mom. Despite my daily menu suggestions for dad, my lunch would be the same. I remember how this really nice guy in class never brought lunch on a daily basis, so a truck would arrive outside and he could pick whatever he wanted. To me, that seemed like a dream, but to him I don’t think he felt quite the same way.

The Cherry Tomato Disaster.

On one particular day, I popped open my lunch with my regular lack of enthusiasm that I had at every lunch hour. This lunch in particular was a real winner, and consisted of a white Wonder Bread sandwich with butter and a slice of processed Kraft cheese. To compliment this was a Laura Secord pudding, a handful of cherry tomatoes and a thermos full of white milk. My stomach still flips uncomfortably when I think of it. I sat at a big round table with my friend Jennifer and my other friend John. Per the normal routine, a teacher would walk around and supervise us to ensure that we were eating and not talking, and that we were consuming our nutritious offerings. I was probably around 6 years old at the time, and I had truly had it. Enough of this. No more. I began to devise a plan of how to escape from this ordeal, and get outside for lunchtime recess. I studied the objects in front of me, and it wasn’t long before the wheels were turning and I knew EXACTLY what to do. I wasn’t a huge fan of white milk, so I basically had to hold my nose and throw it down the hatch so that I wouldn’t be subjected to the taste. Next was the chocolate pudding – no sweat there. Gone. Sister Davis glided by and I smiled appreciatively at her lunch monitoring skills. She probably wondered why, for the first time ever I actually looked pleased about lunch. 

Soon it was time to execute my plan. White bread with butter on it was very easy to mash up and form into a putty-like ball due to its moist, cheap composition. I experimented with rolling larger balled-up pieces, and smaller ones to see which would work better. The larger ones were preferable, as I could make fewer of them and be done with it. The only major obstacle was that the mouth of the thermos was really small, so it was hard to bash the sandwich putty down and not draw attention to myself. Jenn looked on with curious horror, but said nothing. John was in lala land and minded his own business. It was better that way; I didn’t want to attract attention while I was working. I felt a wild rush of adrenaline likely comparable to what escapees from Alcatraz must have felt at the thought of freedom. I was almost there. Free. 

Once the sandwich was ‘gone’ I studied the cherry tomatoes…hmm…what to do with these? I couldn’t eat them because the acid would cause upset tummy as I had just consumed a thermos of milk and a chocolate pudding. They were so perfectly explosive and bulbous…and the thermos was pretty packed. I placed one of them in the thermos and gave it a wee push. “Pop! Splat.” Perfect. I proceed with the other four. It was quite impressive just how flat those little suckers could deflate! Once the 5^th victim had been squishedd, I screwed the cap back on the thermos.  I motioned for Sister to come and grant me my freedom. Note - you weren’t allowed to simply pack up your things and go outside – there was an inspection involved. I left the Ziplock bag inside the lunchbox and the pudding can toppled on its side to really stage the scene and make it look like a well-appreciated lunch. Soon I felt her looming over me. I slid the blue plastic box towards her. “You’re done?” she questioned. “Yes I am!” I said with a little too much enthusiasm. “Open the thermos.” She wasn’t laughing. The room began to spin, and my vision was going blurry. I could feel the colour draining from my face. I pulled the plastic box towards me and uncapped the now 10 pound thermos. It was truly very sad looking with the deflated red skins packed into the opening of the vessel. I was silent, avoiding her glare. Jenn’s eyes were like saucers, but she said nothing. “You will eat that before going outside.” I was wrought with wild, 6 year old humiliation, but refused to cry. This was after all dad’s fault and I wasn’t going to take the hit for it. I gnawed on a few of the tomato skins and took my time. There was no way that I was going to subject myself to the sandwich putty. At about the ‘5 minutes left of lunch hour’ mark, she released me. She probably knew that I had another thing coming to me once I got home...but that is another story. The vision of dad saying some colourful words, hunched over the garbage with long extraction tool inside the thermos is enough to make me feel numb again.