8 Minute Memoir, Day 14: School Lunch

School lunch!  Throughout the vast majority of my school career I was a bring-my-lunch-from-home kinda girl.  I had money on my lunch card to get milk every day and occasionally would get hot lunch (usually on pizza day).  Here's a pretty standard example of school lunches throughout elementary, grade, and even middle school:

I used to bring a lunch packed by my mom.  A sandwich (turkey, ham, peanut butter and jelly), chips (usually Doritos, occasionally a potato chip or corn chips of some sort), and something sweet.  Usually cookies (Oreos or Chips Ahoy) or a Hostess product (the cupcakes will forever be my favorite).  Drank with a chocolate milk.  When I went to RMS, I used to bring change to get a Fruitopia from the vending machine--Strawberry Passion Awareness was my favorite.  I used to get school lunch on pizza day, or Bosco sticks day, but that was about it.

In high school, I would get school breakfast before the day started, getting bacon egg and cheese bagels wrapped in foil.  I still often brought my lunch to school, but again, ate lunch at school for pizza day--are you seeing a pattern here?  At least by the time I got to high school, the pizza came from Pizza Hut!  I also pretty regularly got the turkey sandwich boxed lunch from the separate cafe lunch line; the bagel and cream cheese and Brisk Lemonade was also another frequent flyer option for me.  

Then I went to college, and I had a meal plan and Huskie bucks.  So "school lunch" entirely depended on where I was on campus or what I was up to.  For example, when I was a freshman, I was frequently eating in my own dining hall for lunch, Grant, or heading over to Stevenson to get pizza or the taco bar.  Making sandwiches and ramen in my dorm room, on my desk, with supplies I'd purchased on a number 7 bus trip to the Walmart on Sycamore Road.  When I was a sophomore, I went to the Dog Pound in Douglas to get sandwiches and in Neptune, where I lived that year, I got breakfast sandwiches on the way to class.

By the time I moved out on my own, I was making simple lunches in the townhouse (junior year) and apartment (senior year).  Sandwiches, tomato soup, macaroni and cheese.  Pretty regularly I would get lunch on campus, eating at the dining hall in the Holmes Student Center or getting Subway.  Always valuing something salty and something sweet to go along with a sandwich, or a salad, or a protein.