Lucky to Have a Lunch Box

I have brown-bagged lunch since I graduated from college (the first time). The idea of eating fast food every day or paying someone to make one sandwich for the price of a week's worth of sandwich fixings just irks me. Though I have to admit, school lunches are pretty cheap - only three dollars for soup, salad, entree, dessert, and drink. On the other hand, you get what you pay for. (Several of my friends eat cafeteria food daily, and it just never looks that good to me. One friend gets everything offered, and then picks through it to find enough for lunch. Yuck!)

Mystery meat is just not my thing and neither is take-out banquet food, and yet every year I am faced with the dilemma of ante-ing up money to eat at the less than stellar end-of-year luncheon or schlepping in my lunch sack for all to see. (It is hot pink cammo - sort of hard to ignore.) You're probably wondering why I would even attend a luncheon in which I have no intention of partaking. There are myriad reasons including the fact that I'm the department chair, and it's my job to bid farewell to anyone leaving us. (I don't mind saying adios, but I hate doing it in front of a crowd.) Next, it is my only opportunity to see the end of year slide show. (It isn't terribly grand, but anyone who misses it is considered out of the loop.) Finally, since EVERYONE on campus attends, I can't get any of my check out completed, have a meeting with the boss, or turn in textbooks, so might as well give in and go.

One good reason not to attend this annual fete, though, is the food. The last couple of years it has been brought in from a local Mexican restaurant. Usually I adore south of the border cuisine, but this stuff always looks like slop. The pans of enchiladas are an unappetizing mass of tortillas and runny sauce. The beans are a nondescript brownish ooze. The red pepper flecked rice looks dry and flaky. Compound the matter with a long line of teachers with flimsy paper plates and plastic forks that wouldn't cut warm butter, and you have the definition of a mess.

My solution to this is to amble past the folks in line - stopping, of course, to talk to my friends - find a nice table in the corner, and begin noshing my selection of yogurt, fruit, crackers, pizza - or whatever edibles the hubby has provided. These actions, while quite normal to me, seem to garner a good deal of attention. "Aren't you eating?" people enquire, apparently oblivious to the fact that food is sitting in front of me. "Don't you like Mexican food? Do you realize you live in Arizona?" The questions are a sort of good-natured ridicule because by circumventing the system I am relaxed, seated, and sated long before the rest, thus giving me more time to talk to everyone else. In addition, I think some of them may covet my simple lunch box fare. After all, I know where it came from and what is in it, which is more than I can say for the food on their plates. So, tomorrow at the end of year luncheon, I will be poked, prodded, and teased, but I will be happy with my own humble lunch.