Just spent the last couple of hours checking in a ridiculous amount of books until my wrist started hurting and I had to stop. End of the semester fun--whacked out people and way too many returns. Seriously considered calling in sick this morning, but may call in "sick" next Friday when my sister's in town.
The streets were unusually crowded for a Friday morning, lots of suburban soccer-mom types that are ever so conspicuous in their bright shirts and capri pants. It must be field trip season as well. Yesterday, I must have seen 30 or so schoolbuses parked near the Lincoln Park Zoo. I recall going to the Madison Zoo in the second grade, and then Brookfield in highschool. They were always fun--almost the feeling of playing hooky from the drudgery of school even though you weren't. (also, we usually wound up on those plush coach busses, and not the stinky crowded yellow kind.) There were other trips--we went to Milwaukee alot, in 6th grade to the museum, in eighth grade drama class to see Huck Finn and Macbeth. In junior high, the year always ended with a trip to a theme park, and in 9th grade, we came in and went to the Oriental Institute at U. of Chicago (which smelled like dusty mummies and decay) and the Field Museum. (I will forever associate the Egyptian exhibit with high adolescent trauma.) For French class, we would occasionally come in to dine at a "real" French restaurant, something scarce in Rockford. I think both of them are actually closed now, but we'd go to the Art Institute to look at the Impressionists and then go eat beef bourgogne and omelettes and delicious little tarts. For drama class my senior year, we came in to see Les Miserables, which not only cemented my resolve to live in the city, but also to be a broadway star. Well, at least one of those things worked out....
There was something cool about bringing that ubiquitous bag lunch as well. I remember being stoked because, since you were charged w/ bringing a beverage, you could actually bring soda (which usually was usually prohibited at least in grade school). I remember the cans, only slightly cold, wrapped in foil. I was usually a hot-lunch sort of girl, so brown bagging it was unusual for me, and my mom would buy all sorts of goodies when she knew she had to make a lunch. (Oddly, this changed later when my sister was in school, she usually bypassed on the school lunches.)
hmm...actually I do remember taking my lunch to school more in the younger grades. I had three lunchboxes that I remember. One was Disco Fever one, pink and purple and all dented that we procured at some garage-sale. (Truly one of my favorite bargain procurements, a list including this 60's grey-blue mini dress one size too small my mother could never get me to take off when I was seven, and a giant flourescent green felt hippo with flowers on it which is still in my closet at my parent's house at this very moment.) Another lunchbox was a bright shiny new red plastic FAME one. The third was Tupperware, square, very orange, and very uninspiring, but it had all these little plastic containers so you could bring chocolate pudding and applesauce in the pre snak-pak days. Uck, I still remember what chocolate milk tasted like when sipped from those thermoses. Even juice boxes were sort of just coming on the market. Of course, the junior high cafeteria seemed to think it was okay to serve mashed potatoes with pizza, so I typically went to the pbj sandwiches, which were actually very tasty, but filled with a bizarre industrial kind of peanut butter and brownish pinkish jelly which would fall in huge clumps onto the sticky table (or your math notebook if it happened to be in the way) whever you took a bite....
God, it must be Friday afternoon, since I'm rattling on and on about lunch...
