The Boy Who Gave His Lunch Away

For years i told my mother i didn’t like my lunches. Yet i learned to expect, five days a
week, one of two things. Muenster cheese with butter on white bread , or salami and
butter on white bread. The only break in noon hour drudgery, which i remember, was the
ocassional miracle of liverwurst. Upon reflection, the butter did aid my reaction consid-
erably, as one does not put butter and liverwurst in the same sandwich. I could have
taken the cheese or salami out and scraped the butter off, but all i really had to do was
open the fridge and recognize the flavourless packaging inside the cellophane and i was
in no mood to eat lunch. Obviously the white bread was reason enough. I suppose i could
have returned the stark sandwiches to their maker, in protest, and calmly explained why
i could not eat them, but at such a young age, while receiving continual instruction as to
how good, honest people never get anywhere, supported by my mothers auto-biographical
offerings, it did not occur to me that honesty had a blunt power of its own.

Through seasons of discontented lunches i developed a variety of disposal strategies in
response to corrective lectures outlining the reasons why i should eat the sandwiches
given tome. My first method was depositing a sandwich in the kitchen garbage can and
placing an available assortment of garbage on top. After school i would double-check in
case i had not been careful enough in camouflaging the package. Minor adjustments
were routinely made at this time; sometimes vigorous shuffling, if the garbage did not
quite look natural.

When my mother returned home a curious thing happened. A gravitational foams of
unusual strength instantly brought her into contact with my magnetic lunch, and she
was compelled to ask me why my uneaten sandwich was stuck to her hand like glue.

I knew what i had done could not be excused, but the inflicted guilt always caused me
to try and hide my opinion, so as not to draw attention to myself, and i just knew 1 would
be confronted whether i tried to hide something and was discovered, or whether i ap-
proached the problem with honesty. Naturally i choose the solution which promised a
possibility of non-confrontation. Strangely, i did use this method over again, many times,
even though i was caught almost as many times. It seemed like a wonderfully simple an-
swer to a frequent problem.

Another low effort disposal technique was throwing the sandwich out the window into
the alley. I was never so dumb as to carelessly toss it straight down; rather, i would
swing my arm to the side as forcefully as possible, and the sandwich would travel a con-
siderable distance. I will never know if my mother had the private habit of leaning out
the window in all directions, but the fact remains that she discovered it more often than
not. Maybe no one else on the block used white bread, and she thought serving it to me
was the perfect way to catch me, if i didn’t eat my lunch. |

The paranoia must have been quite traumatic, because the final method used at home
defies all sanity, and i cannot remember what made me think of it, other than despera-
tion and, possibly, a well known fact: sometimes, when one is looking for something, it
can be right under one’s nose and this is the reason that the something can’t be found.
Putting my lunch on my mother’s dinner plate might have been interesting, providing
that she would have actually eaten my sandwich for dinner and not noticed. Instead i
carefully placed the sandwich between the sheets of her bed.

Jim Void

The Boy Who Gave His Lunch Away

For years i told my mother i didn’t like my lunches. Yet i learned to expect, five days a
week, one of two things. Muenster cheese with butter on white bread , or salami and
butter on white bread. The only break in noon hour drudgery, which i remember, was the
ocassional miracle of liverwurst. Upon reflection, the butter did aid my reaction consid-
erably, as one does not put butter and liverwurst in the same sandwich. I could have
taken the cheese or salami out and scraped the butter off, but all i really had to do was
open the fridge and recognize the flavourless packaging inside the cellophane and i was
in no mood to eat lunch. Obviously the white bread was reason enough. I suppose i could
have returned the stark sandwiches to their maker, in protest, and calmly explained why
icould not eat them, but at such a young age, while receiving continual instruction as to
how good, honest people never get anywhere, supported by my mothers auto-biographical
offerings, it did not occur to me that honesty had a blunt power of its own.

Through seasons of discontented lunches i developed a variety of disposal strategies in
response to corrective lectures outlining the reasons why i should eat the sandwiches
given to me. My first method was depositing a sandwich in the kitchen garbage can and
placing an available assortment of garbage on top. After school i would double-check in
case i had not been careful enough in camouflaging the package. Minor adjustments
were routinely made at this time; sometimes vigorous shuffling, if the garbage did not
quite look natural.

When my mother returned home a curious thing happened. A gravitational force of
unusual strength instantly brought her into contact with my magnetic lunch, and she
was compelled to ask me why my uneaten sandwich was stuck to her hand like glue.

I knew what i had done could not be excused, but the inflicted guilt always caused me
to try and hide my opinion, so as not to draw attention to myself, and i just knew i would
be confronted whether i tried to hide something and was discovered, or whether i ap-
proached the problem with honesty. Naturally i choose the solution which promised a
possibility of non-confrontation. Strangely, i did use this method over again, many times,
even though i was caught almost as many times. It seemed like a wonderfully simple an-
swer to a frequent problem.

Another low effort disposal technique was throwing the sandwich out the window into
the alley. I was never so dumb as to carelessly toss it straight down; rather, i would
swing my arm to the side as forcefully as possible, and the sandwich would travel a con-
siderable distance. I will never know if my mother had the private habit of leaning out
the window in all directions, but the fact remains that she discovered it more often than
not. Maybe no one else on the block used white bread, and she thought serving it to me
was the perfect way to catch me, if i didn’t eat my lunch.

The paranoia must have been quite traumatic, because the final method used at home
defies all sanity, and i cannot remember what made me think of it, other than despera-
tion and, possibly, a well known fact: sometimes, when one is looking for something, it
can be right under one’s nose and this is the reason that the something can’t be found.
Putting my lunch on my mother’s dinner plate might have been interesting, providing
that she would have actually eaten my sandwich for dinner and not noticed. Instead i
carefully placed the sandwich between the sheets of her bed.

Jim Void