Bread and Butter Sandwich

This is a throwback Thursday post from Teachers’ Write last summer. This has been quite a week for me. I need to kick start my writing, but for today: this. It’s an autobiography of me as Jo in the lunch room with my bread and butter sandwich.

“I don’t have a sandwich,” she said, with furrowed eyebrows, her hazel eyes staring deeply across the table. That sycophantic six-year-old boy always tried to ruin her life!

“No, teacher. I saw her sandwich, and then it was gone. She didn’t eat it. I know she didn’t,” he said with a smug smile.

Jo held the bread and butter under the table with both hands, willing it to compress into a smaller space. It’s NOT a sandwich, she thought to herself. She gazed directly at the teacher.

“OK, children. Don’t fight. Your mom packed it for you, so eat all your lunch,” the teacher said, distractedly, as she hurried to the next table to deal with spilled milk.

Jo’s shoulders relaxed, and she loosened her vice grip on the bread and butter “sandwich.” She stealthily moved her brown paper lunch bag under the table. Then Jo stuffed the squished wax paper-wrapped remains into the bag with her other lunch waste. Bread and butter is not supposed to be folded. Bread and butter is what you eat at home, not at school, she brooded.

Originally published here.