School Daze !

As I get older my memories tend to get mixed together in a rather large box and retrieving them completely in tacked gets harder and harder to do.  There are parts of stories I remember with much clarity and others that seem fuzzy. Please believe me when I tell you that this story either took place in public school when I was in the second grade or Catholic school when I was in the third grade. I just can’t remember.

What I do remember ,with clarity, is that we had a very mean lunch monitor at my school who thought her job was to make sure the students ate everything their mothers packed in their lunch boxes.  She would position herself at the, one and only, trash can, near the exit, and inspect each and every lunch box before a student could pass and go to recess.

My mother was Italian and we ate a lot of fried green pepper sandwiches all the time. She would fry the peppers in olive oil and top them off with a slice or two of fresh tomatoes. I enjoyed them a lot.

Usually for a school lunch she would pack a sandwich that would last. We had no insulated ice laden lunch boxes in those days. That meant a balcony or peanut butter sandwich.

One day we must have been out of these two staples because when I opened my lunch box I found a fried green pepper and tomato sandwich. It looked nasty. The oily peppers had soaked the bread and the tomato looked disgusting. I tried to take a bite but gaged in the attempt. I ate the rest of my lunch and went to the trash cans to throw away my empty milk contained and wax papers.  The lunch lady intercepted me and with a stern look told me to return to my table and finish my lunch.  I tried again but it was not possible to eat that mess of a sandwich.  I tried to squeeze it together and hide it among the wax paper it was wrapped in and tried my escape again. Nope, she caught me and sent me back, I started to panic because I knew there was no way I could eat that darn mess.  Then I came up with a great Idea, or so I thought. I untied my shoe and stuffed the flattened out sandwich in the bottom of my shoe. I retied the shoe and try to walk. I felt funny but what worried me was the noise it made. I wondered if I could fool the lunch lady. I could and did .although I squeaked all the way to the door. When I went outside I emptied my shoe and never could eat fried peppers again. Today the smell makes me sick. I will not even eat it on my pizza.

I guess that episode helped gave me the will and knowledge to solve problems and get out of sticky situations my whole life. Where there is a will there is a way