When I was a horribly timid elementary school girl, I always worried about what the other kids had. I fretted over coolness before it was cool. I was born envious, I guess.
And so I felt stupid carrying my Partridge Family lunch box when everyone else brown bagged it. I hated my off-brand pastries when everyone else had Hostess: the trusted, authentic and COOL brand for your junk food needs.
But the worst, the absolute dreaded worst, the part you couldn’t hide, was how your sandwich was cut in half.
Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) but me had diagonally-cut sandwiches.
I mean, doesn’t that look so cool? So “now”? So “with it” and “groovy”, man? (By the way, this was the 1970s.)
Meanwhile, my mother insisted on being different. She never understood conformity and never adhered to it. So what did I get in my lunch box?
GAHH!!! How could she? Every day I was tormented by my inadequate lunch items and its nerdy container. And OMG, don’t get me started on the Not-Kool-Aid but some generic form of red powdered drink mix in my thermos.
Oh-oh-oh! The shame of it {SOB!}
And I wouldn’t DARE ask her to change anything, although I don’t know why.
This actually reminds me of an occasion in kindergarten where the teacher observed me display a chihuahua-like response when asked to do something in front of a group of teachers. I couldn’t squeak “NO” fast enough. It’s only because I’m mortified at the thought of messing up in front of people, but the teacher called my mother in to find out if she regularly beat me into a submissive shaky mess, which my mother thought was funny because back then, parents didn’t buy emergency get-out-of-the-country-quick passes when threatened with child abuse accusations.
But back to my tragically unhip sandwich.
Today, I still cut my sandwiches this way, vertically. I can’t stop, because as you know, since I just got through telling you, I am genetically predisposed to this behavior.
But I have since learned to embrace my nonconformity, so it no longer causes me distress to see others’ lunches. While I still have a general envy problem, and while I still worry that someone’s lunch will be better than mine, I do not base my self worth on how my sandwich is cut. So, at least there’s that.
