73 cents and a brown paper lunch sack

I had 73 cents on my lunch tray after I bought a salad from Sunshine at L&T. I usually pour half of my salad into the lid because it's so deep that I can never get to the lettuce before I've eaten the stuff off the top, so this way it gets evenly mixed when I eat it in halves. So as I ate out of the clear lid I could see through it to the spare change underneath. Spear some lettuce and uncover a dime, fork a bit of cucumber and hey, there's a penny. It made me happy. I once read a book where a character had a bowl with blue flowers on the bottom and she couldn't wait to finish her breakfast so she could see them. I rather liked finding change at the bottom of my salad, and I decided it would be wonderful to have all my bowls be like that; to have change and paperclips and tonka trucks and marbles and things of that sort embedded in all my china, like finding a prize in your cereal box, except everyday.

And as I was eating I watched out the window and saw a man running as fast as he could, uphill and in the rain, and I wondered was he was engaged in the biggest struggle of his life, was he chasing after his one true love, or was he just late trying to catch the bus? And I remembered all the times I missed the school bus as a child. We missed the bus on every first day of school that I can remember, probably because we weren't used to the schedule yet after sleeping all summer, having to be up that early, wondering where all our clean socks had got to, etc. And waiting in the Oregon wetness and cold every morning before getting on the bus that was heated only in spots, and only at your feet at first, and the smell of exhaust that pervaded the whole vehicle. I realized that I'll probably never ride a bus again and that felt strange to me. I like riding school buses - they smell weird and the seats are those strange green plastic-like something that people have written on, and there's no leg room, and the aisle's too narrow and the ride is too bouncy. I love it all, the grossness, the hugeness of it all. I wanted to own a school bus, but I thought that parking would be an issue, that and my mom said no.


You can't really sleep comfortably on a school bus, but on long nights coming home from band competitions you'd have to. We used to drive to U of O in Eugene, 2 1/2 hours away, and it was gloriously uncomfortable. Not only are you two to a seat, but you have uniforms and hat boxes and instruments and backpacks and pillows and all sorts of crap, and some stuff could go on something called the crap seat, which was set aside to pile your crap on, but most of it was piled on you. And we still laughed and tried to play card games and one year we engaged in the most intense game of catch phrase I've ever played on the way to Evergreen High in Washington. The score was tied back and forth every turn, 20 -20, 21-20, 21-21. W e eventually called a truce when we were forced off the bus upon arrival. I'd never yelled so much in my life. I loved it.

And thinking of all this I thought of my former friends, various memories, saying goodbye to certain people and places, and thought that I should feel sad, but in fact I didn't know how to feel, and didn't know if I felt anything at all, and it bothered me once again that I'm too emotionless at times. My sister H is a senior in high school and she doesn't want to leave. She says it's too perfect right now, she's having so much fun that she doesn't want to leave it all for college in the fall, and I envy her a bit and the fun she's having. I don't remember much from high school, and it wasn't that long ago, so it must be that it wasn't that memorable.

I went to pick up my now empty salad lid which was on the table next to my tray and through it I saw a word inked on the table. A name in fact - Journy - and I was delighted to have found this too in my salad, along with the change, like I was eating alphabet soup. There are words on the bottom of brown paper lunch sacks, and it was a treat to discover them each day. I've considered selling paper lunch sacks with paragraphs written on the bottom, each day a continuation of the day before, excerpts from a novel, so over the course of the year you read a story - you choose whatever book you want and then read it off your brown bag while you eat your peanut butter and jelly sandwich that got squashed because there was an apple in there with it.