My mom used to pack me lunch in a brown bag in middle school and high school. We didn’t have fancy bento-box lunch trays in a perfect carrying case back in the mid-to-late eighties. We had smushed brown bags in the back of our backpacks with a half-crushed sandwich inside, and occasionally a perforated juice box.
My mom didn’t cut the crusts off my sandwiches. I wasn’t a baby, but I really did love the PB&J days. I pretty much loved all sandwiches, but I never knew what was in there until lunchtime, so sometimes I got my hopes up for PB&J and then would pull tuna. I like tuna, but when you are starving at 10:15 in Science class, and you start salivating over peanut butter, tuna is like a can of sardines and a note that says “Clean up your room.”
Sometimes there was fruit in there. I don’t remember many vegetables. Maybe a fruit roll-up if I was lucky. Opening the brown bag was always a late morning surprise. That turkey and orange American cheese with a lot of mayo was a winner. I think she may have slipped some lettuce on those, but never tomatoes. I didn’t like tomatoes until I was an adult because I thought they would taste so much worse than they ended up tasting.
When my kids first started bringing lunch to school, I went brown bag for the nostalgia. But if you want to be a good parent, don’t put a Capri Sun in a brown bag lunch. Explosion city. At some point, we upgraded to Laptop Lunches, which I secretly wanted someone to pack for me every day. I took a lot of pride in making their lunches every morning.
The tray system made it easy to pack fruit and veggies, along with a sandwich and snack. I may look and see if I still have one of the Laptop Lunches in storage and make myself lunch in it every day. I wonder if they had depressing moments when they opened their lunches, hoping for turkey and getting something else. Peanut butter was pretty much outlawed.
I used to follow this mom on Instagram who made the best lunches. I said I was watching so I could make better lunches for my kids, which I did, but I really wanted her to make them for me every day. Maybe I just wanted my mom to make me lunch again.
© Jonathan Greene, November 4, 2026
