Those Horrible Lunches

Because of last school year’s lunch drama, the prospect of creating some kind of substance that Vaughn might actually lick, much less digest, was immobilizing me with terror as the first day of school was approaching. As a matter of fact, I chickened out and resorted to Lunchables for his first 2 days of school (since everyone knows those days don’t really count). However, I couldn’t help but feel terribly inadequate as a mother (which seems to be a constant state of existence for me) as I was preparing Vaughn’s lunch this morning, which consisted of slapping 2 pieces of cheese between one folded piece of bread and slathering it with fake mayo. Throw in a juice box and 4 slices of apple, and that was the material that was to sustain him through his mentally taxing first grade curriculum, after a filling breakfast of a chocolate chip waffle and one sausage. Every time I am forced to scour my brain for nutritious fare for my resident food critic, I can’t help but reflect on my lofty ideals of how he was going to have the most rounded palate of any child known to humankind. Instead, somehow my efforts mutated into him having unpredictably distorted food idiosyncrasies. For example, I don’t know a child in existence that doesn’t love mashed potatoes. Not mine, unless they are sweet potatoes. And God help you if you put butter on his toast. I am at the point where I am teetering dangerously close to the edge of paying for the school lunch program, yet another ideal about to be dashed on the sharp rocks of reality.