School lunchboxes
The contents of school lunchboxes haunt me.
When I was in Melbourne, the museum had a display of school lunchboxes past and present and you could see them lined up against a wall. Sandwiches, health food bars, drinks, carrot sticks, apples, cheese sticks. I missed the Sunny Boy (everyone’s favourite drink when I was in primary school - triangular long life packs that I only ever notice now in UHT milk sachets).
Kids dish has started a conversation on lunchboxes present. Things are different where she lives (Kelly is in the US) and part of the fun of the school lunchbox for her is quite obviously translating the potpourri of organic vegetables in her box of vegetables into something that can be enjoyed by children in a lunch box.
It’s all about translation. For Kelly the translation is from organic box to lunch box. For my sisters and I when we were young it was what we were comfortable making: we did our own lunches - we started learning to cook when we were four, from memory, so buttering bread and putting things on it and closing it and cutting it was achievable from very early primary school. It wasn’t just what our cooking skills could achieve, however, it was also what we were happy having other kids comment on. The limits on the translation in both cases include what are available and what parents will veto.
If you call this stuff “history of childhood nutrition” it sounds dead boring. But if you turn and ask someone “What did you have in your lunchbox when you were nine?” everyone gets involved in convoluted analyses and explanations and the history of the mundane turns out to be much more fun than the deaths of kings. After all, kings don’t die that often or that interestingly, but you never know what’s going to be in a stranger’s school lunchbox. Opening the lid is always just a little bit astonishing.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
All I ever got in my plastic Captain Kirk lunchbox was a squished PB&J sandwich, a thermos of milk that had been lightly sprinkled with chocolate flavoring, and a packet of generic brand fruit snacks bought wholesale.
But Captain Kirk kicked ass.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Does it matter what was in it if the cover had Captain Kirk? I am *very* jealous.
PB&J never tok off in Australia when I was a kid - veegmite was more likely to be my spead-of-preference, though I loved egg salad. We had juice rather than milk an yes, fruit snacks for ‘playlunch’ and an apple.
April 6th, 2007 at 11:19 am
You’re right - lunchbox lunches are so interesting!
I still love the idea of packed lunches. They’re not just for kids. I love bento boxes, for instance.
April 8th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
This could get confusing. So I put in my last initial. Which takes me back to school even more than this post!
You can still get Sunny Boys, Gillian, just look in the icy pole section at the supermarket - we had them as icy poles rather than drinks, and some milk bars will have them in the freezer too.
April 9th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Emma, I think it’s the boxes that make things mysterious. Closed containers have *such* potential, especially when nice scents waft from them.
Emma W, I will watch out for Sunny Boys and maybe buy a pack in memory. It just shows that I never check out icypoles that I didn’t know they were still around. They’ve lasted well - I remember them from 40 years ago! Or maybe I only think I remember them from 40 years ago. I need to find out how old they really are…