I don't want this to sound like a sappy forwarded email titled "Do you remember these?" but after talking with a friend yesterday about our memories of going back to school, I think some of you all will be able to relate to these. Please add your own back to school memories.
We would get new school clothes, underwear, and shoes, but couldn't wear them until school actually started. There were two exceptions to this, however. If your family was going some place special or if something special was going on at church a week or two before school started, you might get to wear something new. And you would get to wear your new school shoes IN the house to break them in.
Getting a new metal lunchbox with matching thermos was one of the highlights of the back to school season. It would generally be no more than 2 weeks before you dropped your thermos and shattered the insides. My first metal lunchbox (which, of course, I still have, minus the thermos) was red and black plaid. I always thought the black metal lunchboxes that the workmen carried were very cool.
The first day of school brought a great surprise: getting a copy of the lunch menu for the month. You would take this home and study over it, and put an X through the days you didn't like what they were having, so your Mom would be able to glance at it and know she had to make a lunch that day for you to take in your metal lunchbox. The menu was usually taped to the inside of one of the kitchen cabinet doors.
When your Mom made your lunch, sandwiches were wrapped in aluminum foil. As a matter of fact, anything not pre-packaged was wrapped in foil. If you were lucky, your Mom would buy one of those long boxes of pre-packaged Fritos for your lunch. And these were to be used ONLY for school lunches. If you were going on a field trip and had to bring a lunch, your Mom would freeze a canned soft drink the night before (praying it wouldn't bust in the freezer) and and in the morning, she would wrap the can in foil. Whether you had the individually packaged Fritos or potato chips in a Baggie, they would end up being crushed by the canned soft drink rolling around in the metal lunchbox. But you ate them any way.
We didn't have book bags or back packs to carry our things; we just juggled them and ended up dropping our stuff a half dozen times going home, while everyone else laughed instead of helping pick the stuff up. You didn't mind, because 2 minutes later, someone else dropped their stuff and then it was your turn to laugh.
4 comments:
Puddin, I fondly remember the lunch boxes. The tin lunch boxes were a novelty at the beginning of the school year and quickly replaced with the functionality of the 5x11 self standing brown bag bought in dozen packs. Of course, we had to recycle the brown bag until the poor three day old sack became so wilted and crimped that the condensation of sliced carrots would caused the entire contents of the bag to bust through the sides. Peanut butter sandwiches (without jelly) and lunchmeat sandwiches (without Miracle Whip), and red apple were always a safe bet in prolonging the life of the sack. An e-mail was received at work the other day from the designated fridge cleaning person issuing a plaintive cry for someone to claim their "mommy" packed lunched before the 4:00p deadline when the evening cleaning team roared through. I wrote back and asked if the bag might contain a nuclear family traditional baloney sandwich, greasy Fritos chips in a sandwich bag, and perhaps an apple for a dessert, all in a paper sack. She quickly answered back that the lunch was packed in a modest Target nylon zip lunch bag with blue ice pack lovingly prepared with hermetically sealed butter crackers with cheese (including plastic stick spreading utensil), deli-style roast beef (with Wonder bread lovingly separated in sandwich bag), rolled string cheese and cinnamon applesauce in separate cup-like container. I immediately had immense respect for the husband that adorned his wife with such generous respect. As a member of the GenX society, I sometimes fail to appreciate the fortitude of a simple brown bag lunch, given the appeal of frozen microwavable meals. With the modern day appeal of a complete meal that can be microwaved (sometimes not completely warmed and frozen in the middle), it is sometimes nice to open a brown paper bag in our feverished workplace environment and immediately start dining in simplistic modesty with unhibited conversation
Back in the day, Grandma would look for the folded brown paper sack first, before she even looked at homework or reports from the teacher. When we were low on lunchmeat and she would send me down the street to the little store to get a slice for my lunch, she'd always tell me to make sure they put the lunchmeat (wrapped in white paper, secured with a brown strip of tape) in a brown bag so we could reuse it. To this day, if I don't use my Tennessee Titans insulated lunch bag, I always fold up my brown bag and put it in my purse for the next day. Grandma would be proud.
One year, probably around 5th grade, my Mom took me out for back to school shopping. I got new shoes at Gallenkamp. I still remember the yellow shoe box. I thought they were the coolest shoes ever. They were called something like "Glomper Stompers". I loved them so much I adorned them with some knee socks and began the pilgrimage ten houses down the street to show my friends. Even though school was a couple of weeks from starting, I persuaded Mom to let me wear them down to Brenda's and I promised I wouldn't scuff them and I would come right back home and put them back in the yellow box. I'm sure I looked a sight walking down the street in my summer shirt and shorts, knee socks and Glomper Stompers. My friend's older teenage sister saw me coming a doubled over in laughter. My heart was broken. Bitch.
Ohhhh yeah - I remember Glompers. I loved Gallenkamp, up at Dixie Manor Shopping Center, lol. I think my 5th grade shoes were Truckers -- they were royal blue, with white racing stripes, and were kinda like running shoes, but they were suede. I liked them for a couple of months, then I wanted white ones. So I took them down to the basement and got the bottle of Clorox out and bleached them.
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