"Lunch hour is the loneliest hour of the day."
-- Charlie Brown
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| Lunch note 8-20-14 |
"At our school, the older you get, the stupider your lunch period."
-- Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me
School sucks.
For my son Leo, the sucking started today.
It's true, school can fill a kid with lots of good things. But we all know it can also force feed him a shitload of total ass-crap.
That's where lunch notes come in.
I pack Leo's lunch every day.
On many of those days, I tuck a small note in along with his sandwiches, chips and applesauce.
The food is how I try to feed him what he needs to keep going physically. But the notes are how I try to feed him a little shot of encouragement, or humor, or understanding, or nonsense, or whatever kind of boost he might be hungry for that day.
In the middle of a long hard day packed with information, and peer pressure, and cliques, and competition, and grades, and questions, and hormones, and overheated classrooms and uncomfortable desks, a lunch note reminds a kid that someone outside the building is thinking about him and loves him.
The lunch note is a tiny thing, but it's a very good thing. On some school days it might be the only good thing that happens to a kid.
You can't eat them, and I don't think they're on Mrs. Obama's healthier school lunch agenda.
But they should be.
If you ask me, little lunch notes should be a required part of every kid's daily diet.
They're soul food.
