Tuna’d Out
It’s been more decades than I care to admit, but I can still remember carrying my little metal lunch bucket each day and hoping that mama gave me something besides TUNA in my sandwich. Sadly, there was no cafeteria or hot lunches at my tiny school.
The “cloak room” was like a large closet without a door that seemed to draw and store the heat from the clicking radiators in our classroom. Our home-made lunches were also stored there, along with any wet coats, hats, and boots that accompanied us to school. By the time the little hand and the big hand met on the big round clock, the co-mingled smells of lunch box contents and musty mittens overpowered the chalk board dust and assailed our noses.
I was always starved by 12 o’clock – a condition that encouraged me to consider a peanut butter and homemade jelly sandwich a gastronomical delight. Sometimes a sliced cheese or bologna sandwich (with too much mayo) was a change of pace. But, in spite of my tummy in growl mode, I didn’t feel the same about Tuna. Oh! How the fishy odor of tuna would disappoint my taste buds before I even loosened the latch. The trauma was so great that today, if I catch a whiff of overripe bananas and canned tuna, I am instantly returned to lunch time in that little four-classroom schoolhouse.
If you want to chew on some more school lunch memories - click here and tell Faye that I sent you!
The “cloak room” was like a large closet without a door that seemed to draw and store the heat from the clicking radiators in our classroom. Our home-made lunches were also stored there, along with any wet coats, hats, and boots that accompanied us to school. By the time the little hand and the big hand met on the big round clock, the co-mingled smells of lunch box contents and musty mittens overpowered the chalk board dust and assailed our noses.
I was always starved by 12 o’clock – a condition that encouraged me to consider a peanut butter and homemade jelly sandwich a gastronomical delight. Sometimes a sliced cheese or bologna sandwich (with too much mayo) was a change of pace. But, in spite of my tummy in growl mode, I didn’t feel the same about Tuna. Oh! How the fishy odor of tuna would disappoint my taste buds before I even loosened the latch. The trauma was so great that today, if I catch a whiff of overripe bananas and canned tuna, I am instantly returned to lunch time in that little four-classroom schoolhouse.
If you want to chew on some more school lunch memories - click here and tell Faye that I sent you!
Comments
Balogna with too much mayo not that's a lunch!
Worst memory of school lunches too warm milk!
may I say Yuck!
Hot tuna
We had a cafeteria...Thank Heavens
and great Italian cooks.
You my friend are a good writer.
I think my favorite school lunch sandwiches were apple slices & peanut butter.
Makes me realise how little variety there was in foodstuffs throughout my school-days.
anybody ever get upset tummies from warm cold cuts and warm tuna?
i've had some school lunch traumas too.
all in recent years when i unfortunately forget to bring my lunch and i end up eating the school lunch.
yes, we were spanked for being late, it was a HUGE crime and you had to kneel down as you wait forthe school assembly to be over
Hugs and blessings,
It was a treat when my Mom (who taught at my school) had lunch room duty. Only a handful of kids ate at school (No kitchen, just 2 tables and a teacher who supervised)and I longed for a cute lunchbox. Mom got me one so I could eat with her on those days she had duty. Grace thinks it is a hoot that I LOVED that! She would love to be able to walk home! But they don't have as long to eat these days...and no time for play on the playground either at lunch. Some things lost are sad. : (
Love,
Sue
Made me flash back to when I was a little kid for a moment... decades ago.