When new kids would come to school we would invite them to our table but somehow they always ended up upgrading to the popular table and never spoke to us again. I lost three best friends to the aforementioned lunch table and it was devastating.
Now as a tiny girl, I did not need a whole lot of food to sustain me throughout the day. I was happy with a snack, a juice box and a sandwich.
For a while all I packed was a peanut butter sandwich (I didn't like jelly or any condiment of any sort besides peanut butter or ketchup), a Ssips iced tea juice box and a pack of dunkaroos. Dunkaroos were basically the best invention, in terms of food, in the 90s. They still exist today, which I actually didn't know until someone in my Ethics class was eating them and our professor did not know what they were. We spent the next 20 minutes talking about how awesome they were and where we could buy them. They were similar to Teddy Grahams, but you dipped them in either chocolate or vanilla. What is better than that?
Comparably, I also loved those Ritz cracker packs that you dipped in cheese. I brought those with me to lunch too sometimes, or someone would let me have theirs if they didn't like them.
There was also the infamous year where my mother allowed me to pick what I wanted for lunch and she agreed to pack me the same thing everyday. This was the year (I know you were waiting for this, Patsy) that I packed a marshmellow, a Ssips juice box, and a piece of American cheese. No I am not joking, that is literally all that I packed. I was a really picky eater and my mom had gotten so upset with me for constantly bringing home my lunch leftovers because I didn't like what she made me. Like I said, I was a tiny girl with a little appetite, and I didn't eat anything with sauce, dressing, butter, etc. The choices were limited. I had a plain reusable lunch box for a long time, but my mom stopped letting me use these for this reason. Since I brought home more food than I ate, she made me use a brown bag so that way she could at least pretend I ate all my lunch because she didn't have to see the leftovers.
This also reminds me that by the time I was in 5th grade, we had an entire lunch table dedicated to people who were allergic to peanut butter. They had to sit there because it was hard to tell a bunch of elementary school parents that they can't pack their kids pb&j, which is probably all they ate anyway. We made lots of jokes about this isolation because we felt bad for those poor kids who couldn't even be near a peanut butter sandwich or a friend eating it. There were also lots of rumors about these kids and if they had ever kissed anyone who had just eaten peanut butter.
The Pizza Lunchables were really popular but I didn't like them. There was something about cold pizza sauce that I could not get over. I guess that goes back to me being a picky eater.
In later years, I upgraded to turkey & cheese sandwiches, potato chips for snack, and a Snapple. In high school I bought my lunch because our lunches were made from scratch by Mennonite ladies. They were fantastic.
Packed lunches were a good part of my daily routine. Yet it is something I don't necessarily miss about real life. The things I have named here are definitely not all of the best 90s lunch options just the ones that are closest to my heart. Is there any snack you loved that I haven't mentioned here? Were you one of the those kids who bought their lunch everyday? I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments about this.
-Brianna