LUNCHBOX LESSONS

Sorry, but I have to digress a bit in this post!

Writing the last one about how lunch boxes with the same theme would often be grabbed by the wrong kid reminded me of an episode that happened many, many Thanksgivings ago after I was grown up with a family of my own.

First, it must be made known that my mom was the greatest at packing a lunch, always a delicious sandwich with mayo and not mustard, which I have since learned to love, along with some kind of tasty treat, from homemade cookies to store-bought pastries and stuff.

Anyway, I was working as the Sports Editor at the then Fort Pierce News-Tribune, and to give my staff the day off (plus, as a father of three girls to get Christmas Day off), I was working Thanksgiving, which meant going in around 4-5 p.m.

That gave me plenty of time for my family to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house.

After dinner, I spotted my mom making a thick turkey sandwich that looked absolutely fantastic, and when we were leaving so I could go to work, she handed me a heavy brown paper bag and told me it was for later.

All night long I thought about that fantastic, tasty, probably still warm turkey sandwich, and about 10 p.m. took my dinner break to sink my teeth into sheer delight.

I pulled out the heavy, thick square wrapped in aluminum foil and what to my wondrous eyes did appear ….

… FRUITCAKE!

What?!? I thought to myself, with a few other choice words added!

Instead of a thick turkey sandwich, a square of fruitcake! And NOBODY in my family likes fruitcake!

I desperately took off in my car to the one restaurant in town I knew was open … but of course my bad luck held and they had just closed.

Not only did I not have my beloved turkey sandwich, I was reduced to dinner from the lunchroom vending machine.

It was many, many years before I could even broach the subject, but when I did my mom told me she had been making a turkey sandwich for my dad’s lunch the next day.

Since then, it has been a treasured memory and story about the day I opened up my delicious turkey sandwich – and found fruitcake!

Another super-cool metal lunchbox I remember having was the one based off the early Irwin Allen science fiction series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (ahem, which became in our grade school minds Voyage to the Bottom of the Toilet Bowl … kids!)

As I remember, it featured the Seaview nuclear-powered submarine being menaced by yet another super-sized sea creature, either an octopus or a squid. Great stuff!

Was also thinking about how several of us always seemed to turn up with the same lunchbox theme year after year. Upon grabbing our themed lunchbox from the kitchen at the church where we went to class or from the shelves in the back of the room where they were stored until lunchtime – teachers couldn’t let kids keep their lunchboxes or bags at their desk or everyone would be snacking all morning – it was quite common to either:

1.) Find out that your delicious turkey or ham and cheese sandwich and moon pie with soda pop in the thermos bottle that you swore your mom had told you that morning she had packed had mysterious turned into a disappointing bologna and mustard with pickles and skim milk in the insulated bottle, or

2.) The drudgery of yet another bologna with mustard and pickles with skim milk in the Thermos bottle had magically transformed into a feast of turkey or ham, a moon pie and soda!

Luckily the horror of the first, and the sweet surprise of the second ended within a few days of school starting as moms put a strip of tape with your name on your themed lunchpail … or, horror of all horrors, drew on the lunchbox with a permanent marker.

That was good new or bad, depending of course on what kind of lunch mom packed!

Of course, you quickly learned to not trust the obvious as you could sometimes wind up with egg on your face, or at least egg salad in your mouth instead of a chicken sandwich.

Or, don’t count your chicken sandwiches before you open your lunchpail hatch!

In even other words, no matter how good a thing it seems to be, always open the lid and look inside to be sure!

One of my very favorite “lunchboxes” was’t made of metal and/or plastic and indeed wasn’t even a box or a pail – it was the ubiquitous brown paper bag.

For some reason we HAD to use them in first grade, no one had an actual lunchbox.

I don’t know if it was just because we were so young or what. I’m also sure it didn’t have to do where we went to school.

Back in the early 1960s, Hobe Sound Elementary was – if I remember correctly – a two-room schoolhouse with another two-room building and a large dirt and grass playground in between.

Since the school had six grades, that left administrators two rooms short unless they combined grades.

Instead, again, trying to rely on my very young memory that only remembers where we went to class combined with grown-up logic.

In any event, I know I went to first grade at a small nearby church classroom one block over and up the street. If I recall correctly, I believe I attended first and second grade there instead of the schoolhouses.

It was at the church that we all used brown paper bags as our lunchboxes. Our moms wrote our names on them and they were collected when we got to school and taken to be refrigerated in the actual kitchen the church had.

No matter, the lunches and the brown paper combined to create a consistent and unique aroma that I occasionally catch a whiff of today. It always brings back a flood of memories of first grade in the church classroom.

One memory that always triggers, embarrassing at the time but fond now, was of a little Easter skit we put on. The church rooms were built around a little courtyard type set-up with benches and shrubs.

In this skit, I was playing, of all things and for what reason I don’t recall, a squirrel. Maybe it was because I was nut … ba-dump-bum!

I can’t remember anything about the content of this little play or even what my role in it was. I simply remember two things: spotting hidden Easter eggs in the shrub planters, and this:

At one point, perhaps when I was introduced, I walked into the center of the courtyard and as a squirrel in my little first-grade squirrel suit my mom made by hand, I had to shake my little booty and walk back.

When I did so, everyone laughed and I couldn’t figure out why it was so funny until I realized that my squirrel tail had fallen off! I can’t remember being at all embarrassed at the time and perhaps that is why it remains a good, fun memory.

It always pops back into my head whenever I smell that distinctive smell of bagged lunches and the year before we were finally able to carry metal lunchboxes like our older brothers and sisters, or the older kids at our school!

I didn’t know it at the time, but eventually I realized that the smallest, most insignificant-seeming things in life, even a simple brown paper bag, can be the best things in life if you appreciate them.

A simple cup of coffee can become far more than just that morning jolt to get you going if you know to appreciate the thinking you did while staring mindlessly into space waiting for the caffeine to kick in, or newspaper or book you read or the conversation you had.

Talking about my hate/love relationship with the Yellow Submarine metal lunchbox reminds me of one popular yellow pail I DIDN’T have – a Yellow School bus featuring Disney characters.

That was a real popular one for a year or two, especially among the girls of our class at Hobe Sound Elementary School in Hobe Sound, Fla. (It’s pronounced as if it rhymes with lobe and not Hobie as a lot of people not from South Florida called it)

Like me and the year of the yellow Beatles box, a lot of moms got confused and got their sons a Disney yellow school bus metal lunchbox.

Now, that wasn’t REALLY that bad as it was probably first or second grade and the Disney stuff was was still in the acceptable range and not seen as childish.

A few years later, the Mickey Mouse Club and such Mouseketeers as Annette made being a Disney fan DEFINITELY in vogue for the girls and boys, probably for very different reasons!

Anyway, the yellow Disney School Bus pail is probably worth its weight in yellow gold.

Sometimes, you have to look deep, or at least past your own silly mind faults, to see the real value and beauty in some things … and many people. And if you do, it can truly turn out golden for you!

Diametrically opposed to the green lunchboxes I’ve had was the BANANA yellow one I had – of all things, the Beatles Yellow Submarine lunchbox!

Ugh! How I hated THAT one … back then, at least. These days, of course, I wish I had it.

This happened when the Beatles ruled the music world. I liked and like some of the Beatles music, and Penny Lane has always been one of my favorite songs of all time.

But a guy with a banana-colored metal Yellow Submarine lunchbox? That pail was absolutely nuclear – it was SO yellow it practically glowed in the dark. No matter how carefully I wrapped it up in a sweater or jacket, it always found a small crevice and was like the sun peeking out of clouds in the horizon. Everybody could see it.

Today, you can argue about how cool the Beatles Yellow Submarine box was, but back in the day it was DEFINITELY a girly-girl type of lunchbox.

Having what is typically considered in this country as a “girl” name – KIM – didn’t help matters much. It doesn’t matter that Kim is a time-honored male name in Asia and lots of guys are named Kim in the U.S. (yay, guys!), being a Kim with a Yellow Submarine pail definitely drew lots of attention.

My saving grace was Lynn, with whom I went to grade school.

He was a boy. A very tall and well proportioned boy, who happened to be a friend. No one messed with him, and thus didn’t tease me as much, either.

Even during that year when my yellow lunchbox shone like the sun.

Oh, yes, and THAT was how I learned it was better to go WITH my mom when she went to buy my school supplies instead of staying home to play football with the guys in the huge sand lot behind our house.

She thought since the Beatles were hot and lots of moms were buying the Yellow Submarine metal lunchbox so she followed suit and got me one too. I’ve never been much of a lemming.

That year I learned to laugh at myself and realize that people who point the most fun at you like you the most.

At the time, I think I could have learned that in one day and then moved on to another themed metal lunchbox in a less bright color!

Another Mean Green Lunchbox I owned in the 1960s was the ever-popular G.I. Joe.

When it comes to action figures, there is none more popular with boys than G.I. Joe. Even the girls preferred Joe as a boyfriend for Barbie over Ken! It must have been the beard and the scar.

Anyway, instead of having an actual G.I. Joe, I had a cheaper knockoff by the name of Stony. I’ll have to look up the full and actual name.

Stoney was OK, except his joints didn’t move. His head turned side to side, but other than that … a solid block of hard plastic.

That reminds me once on my birthday, I liked the extra large plastic toy soldiers and a friend’s parents got me this huge hollow ones instead. I ended up putting them on the floor against the wooden sliding doors of my closet and throwing darts at them – since they were blown up and hollow like a solid plastic balloon, the darts penetrated them and looked pretty cool.

Some months later, my friend was NOT very pleased to learn that I threw darts at my birthday present – but I really ended up enjoying them better than the jumbo sized plastic toy soldiers I really wanted. He just didn’t see it that way.

My dad wasn’t very pleased either, as missed darts chewed up both the closet door and the terrazzo floor!

So what all does this have to do with a green, orange, and blue G.I. Joe lunchbox?

Since I didn’t get a real G.I. Joe doll, I at least got the lunchbox and could at least make it SEEM as if I was one of the cool kids!

The neat thing about the G.I. Joe lunchbox and other lunchpails of its time was the matching Thermos or insulated bottle that always came with them.

You never knew what mom might put in them. On a cold day, perhaps a warm and tasty tomato or beef vegetable soup, and on a hot day, refreshing iced tea or cola.

For all of us, the G.I. Joe lunch box actually lasted only about a year before being replaced with a lunchpail of whatever the next cool thing was that came long, probably the Batman and Robin lunchbox!

Perhaps YOU had a birthday gift or a present on another occasion that seemed stupid upon opening, but ended up being most enjoyable and memorable when you realized its full potential and meaning later on?

My favorite mean green lunchbox was a metallic Batman and Robin lunchbox that I had back around 1966 or 1967 when the TV series was at its peak.

As I recall, the box had a green background with Robin standing in front of the Batmobile while watching Batman swing in on a rope and punch a supposedly bad man smack on the jaw, I don’t think it was one of the known villains like Riddler, Penguin, Joker or Mr. Freeze.

I think the Thermos or insulated bottle, I am not sure if Thermos actually made them but I think they did, had both Batman and Robin swinging in on ropes.

A lot of my classmates had them, too, and now we are all kicking ourselves for not holding onto them as I understand they are worth a lot of money these days.

In fact, I was doing some online searches into the old TV show when I spotted the Batman and Robin lunchbox and took a look.

That got me to thinking about all the lunchboxes I and my classmates had over the years and – VOILA! – the idea for this lunchbox blog was sparked in 2008! It has moved around a bit and has now found a permanent home here.

I couldn’t name it after any one lunchbox as I had a new one practically every year, plus I am not sure if I would violate any copyright laws, and since my Batman and Robin and many other lunchboxes in the past had the color green in them, and since today’s lunchboxes are “going green,” I figured Mean Green Lunchbox just might be the perfect location for my site.

Hopefully you will look back and recall all the lessons you learned in childhood and enjoy my reminiscence. If I have achieved my mission, you will be transported back to fond memories of your own about your school daze, sorry, days – which when you look back on them probably weren’t as bad as you thought they were at the time!

Feel free to share you recollections here … but no spammy or inappropriate comments will be approved. This is a fun place!