I'm not terribly fond of grocery shopping, mainly because I have to lug the bags home on the bus. Because of this aversion to schlepping, there are times when my fridge borders on empty. I figure as long as I have cereal, milk and bread in stock I won't starve.
It's still a mystery to me how memories are triggered, but a recent visit to the almost-empty fridge had me recalling an incident from long ago:
Every day at 11:45 our third grade classroom at Holy Redeemer School turned into our third grade lunchroom. Once Sister Mary Agathona led us in a recital of Grace, we sat at our desks eating in silence.
I would open my Dale Evans lunch box to find the usual -- bologna on Wonder Bread (unless it was Friday, of course), sliced carrots and a Twinkie all tightly wrapped in waxed paper. It was a decent lunch. It filled me up. I had no complaints until the day -- and it wasn't a Friday -- the bologna was missing. In its place was brown sugar. Brown sugar and butter on Wonder Bread. Had I been bad? Were we suddenly poor?
My silent refusal to eat a brown sugar sandwich created a problem. You see one of Sister Mary Agathona's duties was to check our lunch boxes before releasing us to the playground and she took her assignment seriously. She looked in every lunch box. She rifled through our lunch box trash to make sure we weren't throwing away food we should be thankful for. If she were alive today she'd have a thriving career with Homeland Security.
"There are children starving in China," she reminded us every day. Maybe that was true but I was sure that even a scawny Asian kid wouldn't eat a brown sugar sandwich.
Precious recess time was ticking away. What was I going to do with an entire brown sugar sandwich? The only pockets I had were in my jacket and Sister Mary Agathona stood guard between me and the cloakroom. If I stuffed it into my desk it would only delay the punishment and she'd call my mother -- the very woman who was responsible for this mess. Besides, it was difficult to keep a secret from a nun. It might even be a mortal sin.
I ate the carrots. I ate the Twinkie. I scanned the room to make sure Jerome the tattletale wasn't watching. I listened for the rustle of Sister Mary Agathona's rosary. Then...I squeezed my brown sugar and butter on Wonder Bread into a golf ball size wad and surrounded it with waxed paper.
I called on every saint I had ever heard of to help me through this crisis while I mustered my most angelic face.
"Did you eat all your lunch, Mary Jan?" asked Sister Mary Agathona.
"Yes, Sister," I lied. I was surely doomed to hell now.
"What's this then?" she questioned, pointing to a protruding crust.
"Just a bit of crust, Sister. See?" Luckily one of those saints must have been listening because only a small piece of crust broke off, leaving the entire brown sugar and butter sandwich behind.
"You may go, Mary Jan," she said.
On the playground I waited for the lightening to strike.
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