Every morning I carefully pack lunch for K.  I reach up to the top of the fridge and grab her adorable Hello Kitty pink canvas lunch box.  I pull her sandwich and snack containers out of the dishwasher or the cupboard and I fill her adorably overpriced (though very durable) drink bottle with juice or soy milk.  I pack everything up in an environmentally conscious trash free bundle and then just to be really smug and good to the earth I top it off with a cloth napkin.

This really works for us for several reasons.

1) K hates getting up at lunch to throw things away… the garbage and compost bins are “ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE CAFETERIA MOOOOOOOOM”.  So even if there was garbage in her lunchbox she would bring it home to me rather than walk away from her seat for 2 seconds.

2)  It’s more cost effective to buy a few special containers every couple of years than it is to purchase the 6,000,007 plastic baggies and napkins we would use other wise.

3) Cloth napkins are soft and my child is a pansy.

4) I get to feel good that I am killing the earth a little bit less than someone else.

This is all very important to this post, I’m not showing off.  The reason you need to know all that is so you will understand the horror I experienced last night when I fell asleep.  I think it was shortly after I drifted into dream land when I found myself sitting in K’s classroom.  The children were all nicely seated with lunchboxes in front of them… like pod people.  The teacher stood at the front of the classroom smiling at their excellent behavior as a guest started speaking to them.  I was the only parent there and I was across the room from K watching her and smiling.  After a few moments of annoying environmental buzz words and catch phrases I realized that the speaker was there to talk to the kids about being more environmentally friendly with their lunch packing.  I smiled a little.  K’s lunch is by no means the MOST environmentally friendly thing in the world as far as containers go, but it’s not bad.  Like I said, I’m killing the earth a little less than someone else.  I knew that she would get a big kick out of the lesson.

After a few moments more of talking to the kids she asked them all to open their lunch boxes.  The sound of zippers and Velcro was heavy in my ears for a moment and then the guest speaker began to exam the contents of each box.  She nodded and smiled her approval to half the class and then when she got to K’s lunch box her face dropped.  She asked who had packed her lunch and K pointed a shaky finger in my direction.  I went over to exam the source of the problem and when I looked inside her lunch it was a horrific scene.  Everything was in zipper bags, then wrapped in plastic to make sure it would stay shut.  Not only did she have a disposable bottle of sugar flavored “juice” but I wrapped it in foil and then plastic wrap to keep it cold and closed.  She had 10 paper napkins a disposable spoon fork and knife and then, in order to keep the contents from shifting I had crumpled pieces of plastic wrap and shoved them in all the corners and between all the foods.

I was sentanced to death by plastic wrap, the execution was carried out in the classroom and they buried me in the compost pile.

All I can really say in response to my dream is, what the fuck happened there?