The curse of the uneaten school lunch

Press, 21 August 1989, Page 4

The curse of the uneaten school lunch

Wilsons Week...

There’s this kid, he’s about 300 years old I reckon, who goes around primary schools persuading children not to eat their packed lunch.

I knew him 30-some-thing years ago, and now he’s chummed up with my kids, and they insist he’s no older than them. He’s faceless, nameless, but carries in his schoolbag a million excuses which he sells to kids who in turn try to sell them to their parents after school. “The bread had bits of gravel in it.” “It is called wholemeal bread. It is good for you. You should have eaten it.

“And why have we not eaten our orange?”

“It committed. suicide on the pedestrian crossing outside the school. Honest' It jumped out of my bag and got run over by a Range-Rover.”

The brand of automobile is supposed to add authenticity to the excuse. An optional parental reply at this point is to try and trick your child with superior knowledge.

“Hmmmn. Looks more like a Bentley 4y 2 litre got it.”

“No, that ran over the packet of raisins that jumped out of my bag to try and save the orange.”

“Son, when you grow up I want you to be a television scriptwriter.” “Why, Dad?” “Because your imagination is better than mine.”

The preparation of school lunches is an honoured tradition, continued in our household with the addition of lastminute panic. The better organised parent probably prepares the kids’ lunches the night before.

We like the food to be as fresh as possible, that’s our excuse for frantically cutting sandwiches and packing lunchboxes as the boys are going out the front door.

A greal deal of imagination and creative energy goes, into those lunches, so we are less than impressed when the box comes home, the contents looking as though a mouse nibbled

a corner here and there.

Various encouragement ploys have been used, ranging from a brusque command — “Eat your lunch!” to the more persuasive “Eat your lunch or an extremist group will take your teddy bear hostage.” Give them junk food and they’ll gobble it down. Give them nutritious foods and they regard you with a baleful look.

“I’m not a rabbit!” they say, carefully denuding the sandwich of anything that could be remotely considered good for them. Education was the key, I decided. A little history lesson.

“Boys, do you know how lucky you are to get the range of lunch goodies you have these days?”

They approached warily, aware we were embarking on another of those “what things were like in the Dark Ages” speeches of Dad’s.

“Mum and I never had the range of foods you have today.” “I suppose you had dinosaur sandwiches, Dad?” they giggled. “No lad, . something worse. Marmite and lettuce!”

They made a face,

unaware until this point that their kindly old grandparents had actually tortured Mum and Dad.

“And that was all we had, Marmite and lettuce or jam sandwiches. None of the ham or pressed chicken you get today, none of the range of strawberry yoghurtcovered raisins, or the packets of potato crisps, or the dairy foods AND the only bread we had was one type — stale.” “Where’s all this leading to, Dad?” asked the seven-year-old, aware that all of Dad’s historical ramblings had a message in them. “Where it’s leading son is that Dad has not forgotten how to make Marmite and lettuce sandwiches and they are easier and quicker to make than some of the specialties your poor mother and I toil to put in your lunches each day.” They nodded wisely. That day they returned home, lunch boxes empty. We were particularly pleased to see the five-year-old had cleared his plate, although the way he attacked the refrigerator and the biscuit barrel suggested other-

wise. Later, under crossexamination and interrogation under a 75 watt lightbulb, he confessed all. Yes, he had sampled lunch. No, he had not eaten it all. The evidence had been dumped in the

school rubbish bin. I should have known.That excuse came straight out of the satchell of the 300-year-old kid. But it didn’t work. Didn’t work for me either, 35 years ago. — DAVE WILSON.