lunching out.

Packing one's lunch is a tricky thing, a task not to be taken lightly. You'll have to anticipate whether or not you'll feel like leftover spaghetti in a few hours. You need to decide whether those prepackaged frozen cartons are really all that healthy (maybe) and whether one is really enough food for a whole meal (definitely not). You have to figure out what can be stowed for a few hours in the fridge and then made yummy using only a microwave. Most importantly, you have to figure out what is socially acceptable.

I really thought I was done with all the lunch judging. Back in grade school, you were held accountable for what your mom threw in your lunch box. You could reside in peanut butter normalcy and acceptance, or you could wither in hummus humiliation. The rich kids had Lunchables, and oh, how I envied them in their tiny square ham opulence. I was lucky - my lunch contents were homemade and often kinda weird, but were accepted, even revered, because they were very good. I remember pistachio pudding and homemade beef jerky being big hits in particular. So I became known for having exotic lunches, even if it was only because the kids at my school didn't have very broad horizons.

Now I'm in the situation of having to bring a packed lunch again, but I don't have the benefit of my mother doing it for me. In fact, I'm at a disadvantage, because all the guys here have their wives fix them food. I suppose you could argue that I would play the role of the wife and cook my own food, but that simply doesn't work because I'm a lousy cook. I do the best I can, and I haven't yet resorted to PBJs. The problem is that I'm cooking only for me, and so when I make something, I pretty much have to eat it all week. Chances are good that when a coworker stops by to ask what I'm eating today, it's the same thing I had yesterday and the same thing I'll have tomorrow.

I was on about the third day of beef stroganoff when I started getting teased. People started asking me if I made it in fifty gallon drums or something. I get teased a lot at work, because we have a very friendly and jovial environment. I can usually handle it. But for some reason, the stroganoff teasing really got to me. It wasn't particularly vicious or even very clever, but man, it bugged me. I couldn't figure it out. Why should I be so bothered by this?

I finally decided that it all went back to those grade school ideas of social acceptance based on lunchbox cargo. And while my coworkers are likely judging my lunches in terms of nutrition, I don't think they're judging me personally. They're just giving me a hard time because it's been stroganoff all week and they don't have anything better to tease me about. Basically, I need to get over it. Accept it with a smile and a sly comment about the other guy's eggplant parmesan. Because if anything was ever socially unacceptable in elementary school lunch, eggplant parmesan was it.