living in the shadows

- when i was little, my mother really tried to promote a healthy lifestyle.

- for the most part, it was great. i got to go to the park and run around whenever i wanted, and i got spoiled with kites and frisbees and balls and all sorts of other athleticly stimulating delights. i always had fun at recess, and while she would gently chide me for ruining the knees in my pants, i knew she was secretly glad that i had been doing something adventurous. and that kicked ass.

- the problem came at lunch time. all the students in my class would gather chairs in the back of the classroom and sit in an oblong ring and eat our lunches while excitedly discussing all of the games we would play with our upcoming outdoor time.

- looking around me at those times, i would always see the kids with their adorable packaged lunches and the cute treats that went along with them. lunchables and puddings and fruit roll ups and gushers and even those individual sized bags of chips. and then i would look at my lunch and see an uninspiring peanut butter and jam sandwich next to some grapes wrapped in saran wrap. - don't get me wrong, both of those items are delicious and are in fact still part of many of my favourite lunches today. they just weren't cool.

- looking back, i really think that i can identify this as one of the sources of my inferiority problems. damn them all and their dunkaroos!