In the 2nd grade, everybody brought their lunch in a
brown paper bag. Unless they were unfortunate enough to have to carry a
lunchbox. Carrying a lunchbox on Chicago's Southwest Side in the ‘60’s did not
make a boy cool. It made a boy a target. The kind of target bullies could
identify by lunchboxes, rubber boots, yellow rain slickers, mittens and gaudily
patterned umbrellas bought by mothers with the best of intentions and the worst
possible taste.
In
those days, instead of a refrigerator to put our lunches in at school, we had a
cloakroom, which was kept at a constant 81º Fahrenheit year round. And whether
stuffed into a Baggie® or wrapped in Cut-Rite® Waxed Paper, every lunch spent
hours wilting in that warm, dark room, waiting. And waiting. Which meant that
when some poor kid brought a sardine sandwich, before the end of the first
period the whole class knew what they were having for lunch – pungent-smelling
fish that were warmer dead than they had ever been during their lifetimes.
Like
so many other meaningful Catholic practices, lunchtime at St. Clare's revolved
around a strict reward/punishment system:
†
Love thy neighbor as thyself – go straight to
heaven.
†
Kill thy neighbor or covet thy neighbor’s mate or steal
thy neighbor's 10-speed or dishonor thy parents or lie or cheat or call your
brother a four-letter word you didn’t even know the meaning of – and go
straight to hell, possibly with a lengthy layover in Limbo.
†
Finish every last morsel of your lunch – go straight
to the playground.
†
Throw a single molecule of food away – spend eternity
(the remainder of the period) in the classroom instead of on the playground.
And
with Sister Steve Austin on duty, it would be foolhardy to attempt to pitch
even the tiniest portion. It would have been easier to escape from Alcatraz. Try
to sneak part of a sandwich back into your lunch bag and her bionic eyes would
see it. Hide your celery sticks in your pencil case and her bionic nose would
smell them. And if her visual or olfactory sensors should ever malfunction, her
bionic ears would be able to identify the entirety of your tuna casserole that you
had crammed into your empty milk carton by the sound it made when it hit the
bottom of the battleship-grey, metal waste can.
On
that day which shall live in gastrointestinal infamy, after wolfing down my
PB&J, I waited anxiously for Tommy Bosworth to finish his lunch so we could
hit the blacktop playground. His sadistic mother had prepared a taste of hell
for him that day. I have seen huge stacks of flapjacks that were not piled so
high as that baloney. Tommy worked halfway through his sandwich the way Andy
Dufresne had worked his way through that Shawshank Prison sewer line – with
painstaking disgust. But finally, Tommy could not bring himself to risk another
bite, and resigned himself to a lunch period bereft of fresh air, sunshine, and
laughter. Unfortunately, I was not smart enough or lucky enough to trust
Tommy’s instincts and decided to take matters – and Tommy's sandwich – into my
own hands. Like Paul Newman's fellow-prisoners in “Cool Hand Luke” I wanted to
help Luke (Tommy) finish his plate of rice (baloney sandwich) so he wouldn't
have to spend a night (lunch period) in the box (at his desk). With the resolve
and focus of an Olympic athlete I dove into that processed meat-like substance,
taking an enormous bite that hit the bottom of my belly like a diver hitting
the bottom of an empty pool. I felt as if I had tried to swallow two of my own
fingers. And as I raced for the bathroom the dive began to replay itself in
reverse. The Flash could not have made it to the bathroom in time. I had just
cleared the threshold of the classroom when a torrent of baloney cleared the
threshold of my lips. Followed by P, B, and finally J.
Most
days were fairly uneventful for our 8th-grade hall monitor, but that day turned
out to be an exceptional exception. Thanks to Tommy Bosworth's disgusting
baloney sandwich, on that day our hall monitor would know a mop and a bucket,
and a wailing and a gnashing of teeth.
No comments:
Post a Comment