The leftovers

Some leftovers are good, like pizza, restaurant, and Thanksgiving.

Some leftovers are not so good. One comes quickly to mind: lunchbox leftovers.

This is a story about leftovers.

So imagine for a moment it is that time of the day, finally 11:45 and time for lunch.

You pretty much know what is in your lunchbox everyday, a peanut butter sandwich, some delicious crackers, a piece of fruit, and your water bottle. You take your little gnome lunchbox to the cafeteria with you wondering which fruit your mom packed you. You sit down with all of your friends, friends, who like yourself, left home for the day trusting they would eat a lunch; friends that also confidently answered the lunch count with home or school lunch answers.

You sit at your table in the lunchroom surrounded by hot lunches and home lunches. You hear the carefree chatter around you as children start to quench their hunger with their well prepared lunch.

You smile at your friends as you happily unzip your lunchbox and as you glance down, ready to join in the lunch eating madness, you slowly flip back your lunchbox lid and to your utter disappointment and dismay, the lunch that you have come to expect is not there, but rather, you open your lunchbox to nothing but..... a pile of crusts. And these are not just any old crusts but yesterday's leftover crusts. And not just yesterday's crusts but due to a little mix-up, yesterday's crusts from a triple decker sandwich or even more crusts than you want to see.

You look at yesterday's leftover crusts and because you are starving, you actually take three bites. They are three bites too many considering they are the same pile of crusts you chose not to eat the day before. They are the same crusts that you hate covered in seeds. It doesn't matter, you try those three bites anyway cause you realize this is your lunch. When it becomes too much to bear, you decide you are done with lunch and you zip up your same crusts again, feeling like you have done this exact thing before (and you have, minus three bites) and you wait. You have to wait cause of course no one else is done and it is still too early to head out to recess (naturally, I mean how long can it take to eat three bites of gross crusts you hated already once). So three seconds after you opened your lunchbox, it is closed and you wait while everyone else eats.

Meanwhile, back at home, as your mom is feeding your sisters a well balanced meal of turkey, garbanzo beans, carrots, oranges, and crackers, and suddenly begins to realize that was the first time she opened the crackers all day, which meant no new lunch was made.

She frantically emails the teacher and finds out the lunch and recess are over and you ate yesterday's leftovers. Your mom thought maybe you would get an emergency lunch or opt for cold lunch, but of course lunch count was done and you said "home".

My poor Owen.

At the direction of his teacher, the girls and I took over some food . As we were walking away we heard her say, "Owen, go ahead and sit and your table and eat, everyone, don't look at Owen, look at me and learn".

I will always feel bad about the day Owen and I now I call "the day you got crusts".