What you were eating for lunch at school was always an opportunity for ridicule and a matter of interest to your classmates. The school was tiny and we spent year after year with more or less the same students. Our class of about twenty became like a close knit, dysfunctional little family. You couldn't change your shoelaces without someone taking note of it. What you wore, what kind of notebook you used, the hairclip you had, where you vacationed...all of it was common knowledge among us. What you ate was no exception. It's not much different in schools today, it's just there are more kids to diffuse things. You've got to be careful...very careful...what you do or say, or you could become a social outcast within seconds. So I remember one of the moments I almost lost my safe status as the nice girl over a sandwich.
My grandmother loved food just as much as I do. She's probably responsible for my love affair with food. Somehow the woman stayed thin til the day she died though. One thing she made that I LOVED was a pepper and egg sandwich. You can get one of these in any pizza place but it's rarely made with the love she put into it. Take some onions and Italian peppers (the long, green ones) and saute them in a little oil. Add in some scrambled eggs, salt and pepper and make yourself a yummy sandwich on Italian bread. She'd make me one for lunch now and then, and sometimes there were leftovers. Several times she asked me "You want to take one for lunch tomorrow?" I always answered no. No explanation. Just no. I feared when someone saw me eating this mushed up sandwich with green soggy looking things hanging out if it I would never escape the torture my classmates would inflict upon me. But...she asked the same question whenever she cooked peppers and eggs, always totally puzzled by my inhaling of the sandwich in her kitchen followed by my refusal to bring the leftovers the next day. I couldn't explain my fear to her of course. She would merely fling her hand in the air and tell me how nuts that was. Hell, I knew it sounded nuts, but my fear was NOT unfounded. Vincent Fasciani, who was a hell of alot more Italian than I was, used to bring marshmallow fluff sandwiches once in awhile, and you'd think he was eating moldy shoe. It was kinda weird when I think about it, how this kid who spoke fluent Italian was eating this extremely American and unhealthy thing for lunch. At the time, not too many people even knew what fluff was, and Lord knows my mother would never have let me eat that crap. That's a whole other story though.
But the allure of that pepper and egg sandwich eventually got me thinking...am I imagining this whole thing? Would anybody really say something about a sandwich, especially when I explained simply it was just eggs and a vegetable that happened to be green?
So off I went to school with my sandwich much to Nonny's satisfaction. I recall sitting there at my desk taking a bite, then another. Whoever I was sitting with were my close friends at the time and really didn't seem interested in what I was eating. But by the time I got a third bite in, it began from a couple of others. "Eew, what IS that?!" "What. What's what." "It's green. Look. Isn't that gross?" "Eew." "It's peppers and eggs. What's the big deal? It's good." "Eew, gross." "Yeah, eew. Snot." I was mortified and wanted to kick myself for walking right into that one.
Needless to say, I went back to the dry peanut butter and jelly sandwiches my mother usually made. I'd have to enjoy my grandmother's awesome cooking at home. And these days I know that I must be careful what is in my kids' lunch boxes. Well, they use brown bags now because lunch boxes aren't cool. And I can't write Paul's name on his bag either. "That's a little too kiddish."
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