Pink Lunch Box

I carried a pink lunchbox every day. 

Bumpy and thick, the molded plastic was designed to keep the contents cold during sweltering Texas school days. The outside had horizontal furrows, too narrow to stick my finger inside, but I traced them anyway like they were Braille and I was trying to understand life. The inside of the lunchbox featured separate compartments for a sandwich and chips, plus a Thermos or can of Coke (it's all called Coke in Texas). 

Actual lunchbox, photo courtesy of eBay

But on this day there was no drink, and the lunchbox was considerably lighter at the loss. 

It must have been the end of the month, because at home we had run out of whatever I usually brought to drink in the school cafeteria. There would be no trips to the grocery store until my dad got paid, our next booklet of paper food stamp coupons arrived, or we found time and gas money to visit the SoS Spirit of Sharing pantry in the next town over.

It was the late '80s, either 3rd or 5th grade, long before ubiquitous bottled water and trendy Stanley cups. So my mom packed a to-go container of Crystal Light and a handwritten note in my pink lunchbox. 

"We are out of drinks at home, could Megan please have a glass of water to mix this with," the note probably would have said, if I could decipher cursive. 

Embarrassed of our penny-pinching, I silently handed the note to my teacher and waited with my head down. She read it at her desk, then pulled me aside gently near the corner bulletin board with the wavy paper border. 

"I don't have any cups, so I don't think I can do this," she must have said. "But, so you know, your family probably qualifies for free and reduced lunches."

That last part I remember clearly.

I spent the remaining days of my public education, all the way until graduation, eating free lunches at school. It was where I had my first rectangle-shaped pizza slice with a side of corn and my first taste of Tex-Mex. Every Thursday was hamburger day, every Friday was a fish patty, for about a decade. 

My classmates probably saw I wasn't paying. The kind lady who staffed the register at the end of the lunch line had a printed list, several pages thick, of all the kids on free and reduced lunches. Instead of a dollar and a quarter, I gave her last name comma first name. She marked a check at the intersection of my name and the day's date, and I carried my plastic tray to my seat. 

By junior high, students had distilled into haves and have-nots. The cool kids whose parents could afford things like movie tickets and amusement parks bought fries and Dr Pepper from the school snack bar; others brought from home glass bottles of Clearly Canadian and Lunchables. But every year my parents filled out the paperwork for free lunches for my brother and me.

Lots of the popular kids called school food nasty, but I didn't think it was so bad - except for the chicken fried steak fingers so greasy I could wring them out. Besides, those were not the only hot meals I had. Despite our permanent position straddling the poverty line, my family usually scraped together enough to have food on the table. I don't remember going to bed hungry. 

But thousands of other kids aren't as lucky. More than 1 in 5 children in the United States live in a food-insecure household today.

Which is why I'll never understand people who rail so hard against providing government-funded meals to school kids. It's even become a campaign issue as the presidential election nears.

The arguments against free and reduced lunches - especially universal free lunches to all students - are many, and all of them make me sad.

I imagine a trail of adults lined up in that cavernous elementary school cafeteria, each taking a turn to look down into the eyes of that strawberry-haired girl with the half-empty pink lunch box.

"We don't want you to get hooked on relying on handouts," says the overall-clad farmer who receives crop subsidies.

"If your parents couldn't afford to feed you, they shouldn't have had you," says the man in the fine business suit whose wife does all the child-rearing while he's at the office 70 hours a week.

"There no such thing as a free lunch, they're lying to you," says the harried mother with a toddler at one hand and a plastic bag of cleaning products in the other. She leans closer and whispers, "Does your mom want to buy some Amway?"

The last person to speak to her is adult me. I pull up a chair and sit down so our dark green eyes are on the same level.

"Being poor is not a character flaw. You will not need - or want - help for the rest of your life. You don't have to suffer for situations you have no control over. And you matter, just because you are."

I give her an orange Capri Sun and a hug so tight, we melt into one.