I know it’s only half way through the summer, but I’m already thinking about the upcoming school year and all the great things (love) and the not-so great things (hate). I love the kids are going to make new friends and are looking forward to learning new things. I hate fund-raising (a necessary evil) and I hate some of the politics of the PTA. But the one thing I have a real love/hate thing with is the kids’ lunches.
It’s the same every semester: I start off all enthusiastic and then taper off . . . eventually, the kids get to a point where they’re eating a school hot lunch as often as they’re eating a packed lunch. I hate the pre-planning and the variety I feel compelled to create.
But one of the things I DO love about lunch? Seeing what the others kids are packing . . . (I volunteer at the kids’ school as a lunch helper – opening cartons of milk, jello-O ® packs, Nissan Steel® soup containers, etc.) Because the school is pretty diverse, the lunches the students bring are, too.
There’s a fairly large Japanese student population (thank you Toyota). Many of them bring bento boxes, packed with Japanese food. Tempura veggies and chicken, tofu and noodles, seaweed and rice are some of the foods I saw last year. (I got the feeling there was some good-natured competition among some of the Japanese moms as to who could pack the most attractive and tasty bento.) There are a lot of Southeast Asians (Indians, Sihk, etc) – vegetarian noodles, curries, potatoes and peas, masala peas and carrots. The Latino/Mexican kids brought quesadillas, bean and cheese tacos and picadillo (spiced ground meat with potatoes) and rice. Some of the Korean kids had cold buckwheat noodles, gimbap, rice and bulgogi (but no kimchi!). =)
When I was a little kid, the only other Asians in my school were either related to me or there were just one or two others in the whole grade. If I’d had brought rice and bulgogi or gimbap, I am sure I would have been beat up or made fun of – just another thing for the kids to tease me about, I’m sure! But we were pretty hard up, so it was almost always the free lunch program for me. (But if there was a field trip, Mom always packed Twinkies ®, a can of coke – in Texas all soda is coke – a bag of potato chips and a bologna sandwich dressed with “sandwich spread” – think Mc Donald’s® special sauce.)
What I really loved the most wasn’t just seeing the diversity in the faces and lunches, but something more important: the acceptance of most of the kids. Among the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, there was ramen, pita and shwarma. Some kids ate cupcakes; others ate date-filled cookies or moochi. And kids are kids, so I witnessed my fair share of swaps: tuna sandwiches for fajita tacos, Pocky® for Twinkies ®.
There was very rarely a cry of “EWWWW!” or claims of “that’s gross!”
And that brought a smile to my face.
Every time.
