Napkin Notes

It’s fieldtrip day & a sack lunch is the name of the game.  Normally, my daughter is a school lunch kind of gal. But, since our local school district has instituted the genius plan to include only stale, dry, chalky wheat bread in their lunch menu as a shout-out to reducing childhood obesity (it’s served along side Pizza Hut on the middle school level…very effective), my kids will not touch school-made sandwiches (so my son eats a slice of pizza every day for lunch…take THAT childhood obesity).

When I was a child I eagerly opened my Donny & Marie lunchbox to see if my father had left some bastardized nursery rhyme on my napkin for my lunchtime amusement (e.g., "Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey, Along came a spider, who sat down beside her and said, 'Pardon me, is this seat taken?'")  It warmed my heart & warped my brain to find these little gems safely tucked between my thermos of milk & my sandwich made on mom’s amazing whole wheat bread (which was succulent & bore no semblance to the district’s modern monstrosity).

In a misguided effort to replicate that fond memory, my own children get thinly veiled threats from me on their napkins (e.g., “Beware the giant tarantula that crawled into your backpack this morning before you zipped it up! -Love, Mom”).  I like to think it gets their blood pumping.  And let's face it, what child has time to become obese while running in terror from would-be attack spiders?

Napkin notes were a thing of the past by 8^th grade.  And so I was blindsided one noon hour in the cafeteria by the following message, meticulously typed on my mom’s IBM Selectric:

“Sorry this lunch isn’t exactly up to the excellent standards of most of my packed lunches, but you see it all started when Attila and his murderous Huns chased me from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea.  Believing me to be dead, they left my ravaged body on the rocks by the sea and headed onto their savage mission in Italy.  Fortunately, I was nursed back to health by a group of friendly Poles.  It was some time before I was in any condition to set out for England, what with not a penny to my name and only one good leg.  However, through the aid of my new-found companions, I finally made it to England where I secured employment as an assistant to a Friar in Nottingham.  The work was difficult as I was totally unprepared for illegal poaching, and on the King’s land no less, but seeing the happiness we brought to the peasants, all the risks I took were worthwhile.  Eventually, I secured passage on a trading ship heading for America.  Now there you finally understand my reasons for this pitiful little lunch.   Love, The Mom”

I am frequently asked where my twisted sense of humor comes from.  I believe this answers that question quite thoroughly.  And Mom? Having wisely chosen a more stable paper product than Daddy, whose messages cleaned the pb&j off my mouth and got tossed, I still have your note.