Mouse in the Lunch Box

This picture has been showing up all over my Facebook feed the last few weeks - not sure why.  It always brings back memories of my dad.

My dad worked at a manufacturing plant in our town.  His shift would vary.  It might be first shift which was 7-3. Second shift was 3-11 and third shift was 11-7. 

My mom also worked outside the home.  She left for work early, not sure what time but us kids always got ourselves up, made breakfast and got ourselves off to school.

One of my jobs was packing Dad's lunch, probably because I was the only girl. If Dad was working the first shift he would wake me up about 6:15 or so to pack his lunch. If he was on second shift and it was during school I guess he packed his own but it if was summer I was the one packing his lunch.

Lunch always included a thermos of coffee.  Mom always had some frozen pies or cupcakes or something from the day-old bakery shop in town.  She would buy several and put them in the freezer for snacks and lunches.  There would be chips and a sandwich or maybe some sardines and crackers or vienna sausages.  My choice what Dad ate - I made the lunch. 

While in Junior High I was in Home Ec class. One thing they advised was to 'make lunch boxes interesting and fun.'  Well, one summer day I tried to decide what I could do to make Dad's lunch 'fun'.  I took a plastic mouse and added it to his lunch box, kind of underneath a frozen pie wrapper so it looked like it was nibbling on the sandwich. 

I thought this was really funny of course.  What did my dad think when he opened his lunch box that night at work?  I don't know. I hope he found it amusing but he never said a word about it. 

I took a lunch box break for a few years but when my kids started school they quickly decided that packing a lunch meant they got to save that lunch money.  So I again started packing lunches.  No little rubber mice in these lunches though.  I would write little lunch-box ditties and poems and send along with them or else a short little note.  Their lunch boxes weren't anything like Dad's but I packed their lunch every day until they graduated.  With 5 kids and the last one graduatiing in 2011 I have packed many many lunches.

But this picture, whenever it shows up on my timeline, always makes me think of Dad and the mouse I sent in his lunch.