School Lunch

I have been known to be fairly competitive, especially in the area of academics. In college, Grant and I took three sections of English together. This means we wrote our own versions of the exact same assignments over the course of three semesters. I could hold my own but my husband was and still is generally a better writer than me and he always scored just a little bit higher than me on each of our papers. It fried me every time. I remember one assignment in particular. It was a research paper which I worked my ass off to complete. Long hours were spent in the library going over and over the material until finally I was satisfied. Grant, who went on to get his degree in journalism, always worked better under pressure and likely busted his paper out in a day or two.

When our papers were graded and returned I cautiously looked at my score. 98 percent. O to the M to the G! Eat that, Grant Shellen! Victory is MINE!!!

"What did you get?" I asked him.

"I don't want to say," he said.

Do you want to know why? Because Grant got 100 percent. ONE. HUNDRED. PERCENT. That means that there was nothing, NOTHING, about his paper that could be improved upon.

Ass.

Anyway, I have grown as an adult (clearly) and I am not as competitive with my husband as I used to be and really it does help being married to someone who gets 100 percent on research papers, for editing purposes. Grant tells me he thinks I'm a pretty good writer. He even thinks I could write a book someday. So I'll let you in on a little secret: I think I might actually try. But my worry is that I will never be able to put something out there that is a "100 percent" which is also known as "perfection."

So I threw my back out today and my absolutely perfect husband came home early to help take care of our boy, cook dinner and assist me with general movement. While laying on an ice pack in bed, I picked up Anne Lamott's book on writing, "Bird by Bird," and happened to start reading the chapter on "perfection." In it she says

"perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die."

She then reminds her readers that the reality is that our death is inevitable and that "people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you." Amazing advice.

But, Heather, you have a food blog? What the hell is the point of all of this?

I know, I know, I'm getting there. Just bear with me.

Lamott also talks about the importance of having a "shitty first draft." It is the catalyst to your second and third and so on. The need to constantly produce perfection does not allow for the very important shitty first draft to be written. One exercise she often does with her students is to write about school lunch. That's right, for 30 minutes, just write anything you want about brown bagging it to school. According to her, you can learn a lot about your family and where you came from with this topic. So I present to you my version of "School Lunch." I cannot guarantee 100% but I can guarantee it is absolutely my shitty first draft.

School Lunch

I never thought that that as an adult I would thank my mom for the kind of lunches she packed for my sister and I while growing up. For one, we were the only kids at school whose sandwiches were made on wheat bread. Being as young as I was, I was unaware of the the importance of whole grain in your diet. I was, however, aware of the importance of being cool and more often than not, cool equated to bread that was white in color, not brown. Then there was the beverages she packed for us. It was always all natural, 100 percent fruit juice. Apple, pineapple or orange.

What the hell was that about? Where was all the red dye number 3? How about the high-fructose corn syrup? The stuff that is so far from juice, it can't even be called juice but "fruit drink," rather? I remember the one time we begged and begged my mother to buy us the ever popular 1980s beverage, "Squeeze-its." These are the drinks that Grant has, I believe, correctly renamed "Sting-its" because of the lasting sting the drink would leave in your throat. I imagine that sting is due to the crack cocaine the drinks are clearly laced with. She finally caved into our incessant nagging and bought us some. I think she bought us strawberry or purple or unicorn farts and gumdrop flavor, I can't remember. What I do remember is that they were completely disgusting. We never admitted it to Mom, of course. I was never so happy to see apple juice in all my life after we choked those down.

We also rarely found desserts in our sacks at lunch. As a kid, I did not see why lunch should be made up of anything else but pie and gummy bears. My mom thought otherwise. I suppose it is because she thought dessert should be saved for a special occasion and not something that was to be expected. I remember one particular time in kindergarten when my mom packed me two whole marshmallows as a treat. I could not wait for lunch; they were all I could think about. I remember thinking about how I was going to eat them. There were two so I could eat one at the beginning of lunch and one at the end. Or, I could save them both for last. That was probably what I decided on. I knew that things like marshmallows in my lunch box were a rare occurrence and I wanted to savor every minute of them.

However, being the very complacent and quite child that I was, I was easily coerced by my classmates. Before I knew it, two kids had convinced me to give them my marshmallows. I remember they asked me if I would "share." Oh, how they manipulated me with their words! Share! Share my ass! Those little punks just stole my pillowy treats right out from under my nose! I went home that night in tears and told my mom what happened. I was convinced that I had missed out and feared their would not be another treat in my near future. The next day before school, my mom told me she packed me two more marshmallows and this time, I was not "share" them with anyone. In fact, if I was feeling threatened in anyway or if I feared for the life of my marshmallows, I was to go to the back of the playground and eat them first before anyone saw if I had to because they were MY marshmallows. And that was exactly what I did. I stuffed both marshmallows in my mouth and chewed like hell to get them down before anyone even noticed me. They were awesome and so is my mom.