Queen of the Bondo

Living the cheapskate dream means that you often have to be a little bit backwards. Like me. I’ve never used an ATM. My natural rhythms are Twitter-unfriendly. And this one time my friend handed me her iPod and asked me to change the song and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how.

(This must be genetic, because my parents entered the mystifying world of touch tone phones well past Y2K.)

Now, I do try and keep myself vaguely aware of our changing world, if only so I can complain about how “things are like what they used to be.” For example, I knew that I was part of an older generation when I realized that kids don’t walk to school anymore. And I knew that a cultural shift was taking place as we moved from the “Hey Latchkey Kids, Eat Something So You Don’t Starve” message of the 1970s and 80s:

to a frantic discussion of the growing childhood obesity epidemic.

But one thing that really makes me feel like civilization has marched on without me is this school lunch thing. Are you watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution? Are you reading this new Fed Up With Lunch blog, which is as addictive as a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos? Although I wholeheartedly agree that school lunches need to be better, I’m pretty puzzled by one assumption that everyone seems to agree on: that packing a lunch is a luxury reserved for the economic elite.

Now, the kids who are on the free lunch program, I can understand — and they’re the main reason why school lunches need to be healthier. But let’s not buy into the idea that a healthy lunch has to equal homemade hummus and organic veggies cut into tantalizing shapes. You don’t have to make your own sugar-free fruit rollups, for Pete’s sake, and don’t let anyone make you feel pressured to do that! A peanut butter sandwich costs pennies, even if you buy ingredients from your corner Drug Mart (like I do). Worried that your kid won’t eat it because it’s boring? Try doing what my mom did — give your kid a withering stare and say, “tough. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”

It can never hurt to teach your kid where money does (and doesn’t) come from.