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Wrapping a can of soda in aluminum foil will neither keep that soda cold nor will it keep that soda from exploding all over you and your friends, if your morning at school was a particularly bumpy one. Nevertheless, every day my father wrapped a soda in foil and placed in at the bottom of my brown paper bag lunch.
Reflective soda aside, my school lunches were always an adventure—when my father packed my lunch, anyway. They almost always consisted of peanut butter cracker sandwiches but not the kind you buy already complete. My father spread copious amounts of extra crunchy Peter Pan peanut butter between two unwelcoming Ritz crackers and married them together with a show of force, which inevitably broke either one or both crackers. More often than not, there would be two or even three snacks in my lunch bag, as if my father were packing his own lunch, and at the last moment decided to give it to me instead. He’d include a bag of chips or Ziploc full of Frosted Flakes or Apple Jacks or insert generic cereal name here”) and at least one Little Debbie snack.
I did my best with these lunches. I always ate the peanut butter crackers, messy as they often were, and usually drank the soda in second or third period, to wash down the chips that I ate for breakfast. The Little Debbie snacks were always the most intriguing part of the lunch. I cared deeply for some Little Debbie snacks and would fight to the death to save my Oatmeal Cream Pie. Others, like the Nutty Bars or Swiss Cake Rolls, or even the Tasty Cakes—which we only bought in season or when they were BOGO—were hit or miss for me. As I grew older, I used these snacks as bartering chips, trading for anything from a giant Red Delicious apple (my friend Jesse’s father always gave him an apple – and he hated apples) or a Caprisun, or sometimes even a slice of school pizza from the lunch line. Some of the best years of my middle school youth were spent learning the art of bartering at the lunchroom table, and the brown paper bag surprise played a key role in this adventure.
I never ate all of the snacks in the bag, but I never went hungry either. I asked him once about my lunches. “You never complained, so I just kept doing it.” He continued, “And you never brought any of it back home.” I asked him why he always wrapped my soda in aluminum foil, he just chuckled to himself and changed the subject. One day you’ll figure it out, he seemed to say.
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Admittedly, I am not a morning person. I spend many hours at the computer or writing desk after everyone goes to sleep at night. This is when I get the real work done. But I am also a father, with morning responsibilities. My wife and I are both in college, and so her schedule changes based on the courses she is taking. Last semester, it became my job to take our son to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Two days. I can handle two days, right?
The first few weeks went fine. I prepared some meals in advance, and his classroom has a microwave, so he got leftovers twice. Once, he even got a Nutella sandwich. But when I opened the pantry on that third Tuesday morning, I knew we had a problem. We had no leftovers, no frozen meals, and no bread. This was poor planning on my part. I should have looked Monday night. I should have looked Saturday before I went to the grocery store. I should have looked. But here I was, at 8 a.m. on Tuesday with a bare cupboard and growing boy. So I reached for the Ritz crackers. Before long I was spreading peanut butter like a pro, singing the Battle of New Orleans, just like my father used to do. We didn’t have any chips, so a baggie of multigrain Cheerios would have to do, and, as his school does not allow soda, an insulated bottle of water would have to suffice. I threw in an apple, just for good measure, and we headed off to school.
Thursday morning, as I opened the fridge to get the lunchmeat and bread, he called out from the other room, asking if I would make him peanut butter crackers again—and sing the weird song. I happily obliged.
Months later I went with him on a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. I packed our lunches and included in mine a Diet Coke. Turns out, the aluminum foil keeps the sweat from the soda from ruining the bottom of your paper bag. Now I know.
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