Let me lunch with Yogi Bear - or Space Ghost
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton Cole
I want my Disney school bus-shaped lunchbox back.
Or maybe the Get Smart lunchbox. Or the Munsters. Or The Man from U.N.C.L.E or the Monkees.
All through the 1960s, I took lunch every day at Monroe Elementary School with TV and cartoon favorites.
When I got to junior high school, we were so eager to grow up that we put away childish things like Atom Ant, HR Pufnstuf and the Archies and packed our lunches in brown paper bags.
Now I’m in my 60s and firmly believe that growing up was one the most stupid things I’ve ever done. And brown paper bags leak and tear too easily.
I still pack my lunch most days, but now I use boring, grownup cooler bags made of cloth and vinyl. Yawn. I can hardly wait for back-to-school shopping to begin. I’m going to buy myself a fun-loving lunchbox.
The only two drawbacks I see with this plan is that lunchboxes now are made from plastic, and I don’t know any of these current TV shows or cartoons.
Picking out my metal lunchbox for the year used to be the highlight of back-to-school shopping.
I hated shopping for new school clothes. That involved an excessive amount of, “Try this one on. Now change into this outfit and see what it’s like. Oh, my, you’ve grown three inches since spring. I’ll sew some lace around the bottom of those pants and they’ll be fine.”
“Mom! NO!”
“Relax, son. I’m kidding. Here, go see how this shirt looks.”
Ugh. If it buttoned and wasn’t pink, that’s all I needed to know. Besides, grownups never let me wear anything fun to school, like a coonskin cap or my Top Cat pajamas.
Lunchboxes were different. They were colorful, fun and announced to the world what you stood for — Space Ghost, Flipper or the Banana Splits. Plus, you could really conk somebody a good one if you got splatted with a soppy spitball.
I suppose whapping a boss with a Bugs Bunny lunchbox when he or she demanded that I commit an act of work would be considered unreasonable. Grownups harbor too many rules.
I once cut my fingers trying to force open a metal lunchbox the wrong way; the cafeteria became dinner and a show that day.
Another time, I dropped my Thermos and the glass inside shattered. I ended up with sharp, chunky milk. I promised to strain out the glass with my teeth, but the grownups wouldn’t let me. I guess the bloody fingers had already provided their quota for lunchroom excitement.
You can’t get fun like that today. I don’t think today’s plastic and cloth boxes come with glass-lined drink containers. They sure don’t come with scenes from Jonny Quest.
Dad carried a boring black one every day to the factory. He called the big ol’ thing a lunch bucket.
When we went back-to-school shopping, we tried to get him to pick out a flashy, character lunchbox like Bonanza or the Lone Ranger, but he wouldn’t. He said they were too small, but I suspect he figured the guys at the factory would laugh at him.
One summer day, his lunch bucket broke, and Mom packed his sandwiches in my Disney school bus lunchbox. I believe Dad went hungry that day rather than take a yellow bus with Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the gang. He was still in his 30s then and hadn’t grown up enough to want to go back to his childhood.
If he were here today and still working, I bet he’d carry that Disney lunchbox. If he could get it away from me. Because why shouldn’t lunchtime for grownups be fun, too?
Are you going to finish those chips?