The Peanut Butter Sandwich

In the greatest country in the world every kid deserves a proper lunch.

When my sister and I were growing up my mom made just enough money to not qualify for free or reduced lunch at school.

She may have made $50 a year too much or something like that but certainly not enough to be considered even middle class. We were over the poverty line just by a hair.

When it came to eating lunch at school, most of the time my mom gave us money to buy the school lunch, or sometimes we brought a sack lunch in a brown paper bag, either was fine with me, I wasn’t picky or a materialist.

She was, like many single mothers, living paycheck to paycheck. Paying the bills, and having little to nothing left over for anything extra.

I can’t quite remember exactly how it happened but, one morning after my mom had left for work, I realized that we didn’t have enough money to buy the school lunch that day and there wasn’t any time left to make a sack lunch without missing the bus, so off we went.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

I planned to be honest and tell the cashier in the lunch line about the situation and ideally, she would understand and give us lunch and I could have my mom pay for it the next day.

But unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

When it was my turn to pay for lunch I walked up and explained my situation, keep in mind I’m 10 and my sister is almost 9 so we were still little kids.

I told the cashier that my mom forgot to give us lunch money and asked if I could still get lunch and they would be paid the next day.

She became upset and asked me if I was trying to get a “free” lunch, she then loudly stated that I did not get a free lunch and that I must pay for the regular lunch if that was what I wanted.

I told her once again that I didn’t have enough money but I would give her what I did have and could make up the rest tomorrow. Nope, not going to happen.

I was told that if I wanted to eat that day I could go stand in this other line that was off to the side, away from everyone else and away from the regular lunch.

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I had seen a few kids standing in this line before but was unsure why they were there, I soon found out.

I went over to stand in the line where there was a small roll-up cafeteria-style window, but nothing was there except for a large container with a white USDA label that said Peanut Butter.

After the lunch lady served the kids in the regular lunch line she came over to the smaller window and without saying a word to us she began to assemble peanut butter sandwiches on some very dry bread that she pulled from a drawer.

Just so we’re on the same page this was just peanut butter, not peanut butter and jelly.

After using the smallest amount of peanut butter possible to make these sandwiches, and she only had to make about 5 of them, she handed one to each kid with a small carton of milk, and that’s it.

I ate my sandwich and went about my day, but I didn’t understand why the kids who couldn’t afford lunch had to be treated like second-class citizens just because they were poor or just happened to forget their lunch money.

Photo by Saher Suthriwala on Unsplash

I still didn’t understand the mentality of the cashier, she had worked at that school for years, but when you become so detached from others in your community that you can’t fathom not having enough money for lunch, and then harshly object to feeding a kid who forgot their money, then we have a problem.

This wasn’t an affluent school, it was a public school out in the country surrounded by cows, horses, and other farmland with abundant natural beauty.

I’ve come to realize that she was a big fish in a small pond with unchecked authority.

Had I not tried to get lunch that day and just gone without I never would have had this experience. My day would have been longer and I would have been hungry but I wouldn’t have had to feel like I did.

Now, I’m glad that happened.

I’m glad that I got to see that side of humanity at such a young age, an age that needs a quality lunch for our brains to function in school so we can learn.

Every kid deserves the “regular” lunch and no kid ever deserves to stand in that other line.

My son is lucky enough to go to a school where every kid, no matter what their economic situation, gets a free “regular” lunch, like I said he is lucky, and some kids aren’t.