LUNCHBOX
When I was in 5th grade I had a Tupperware lunchbox. I want to say it was red but since this was 1981 or so, who really knows. I’d be willing to bet is was something simple though because everything but the 64 color Crayola box with the sharpener was simpler, color wise back then. These details don’t matter because this isn’t about my lunch and only barely about my lunchbox. It’s kind of about music and losing something dear to you.
When I was in 4th grade, I awoke in the night, nauseous and with fever, an intense ache in my lower right stomach. Even amateur Web MD enthusiasts will know that these were the symptoms of appendicitis. I still remember wishing I could just throw up and be done with it. Efforts were made to make me comfortable through the night and I was taken to the hospital the next day for it’s exit. A useless organ permanently ostracized from my organ cavity. An abscessed scar, collapsed lung and four days in the hospital followed, with a memory of LEGO sets, one of those little breathing things with a ping pong ball in it and my complete misunderstanding of medical terms. When asked daily by the doctor if I’d had a a bowel movement, I thought he was saying “ball movement” meaning “taking a whiz” of which I assured him I did every day, multiple times. He must have thought I was painting the walls.
The 80’s, as documented here, were a glorious time. Scant rules and a music genre accelerating along with computer technology, the world was alive. Upon leaving the hospital I was given my appendix in a little sealed bag of formaldehyde, a whitish grey little root thing, amply disgusting and perfect for bringing places. Blondie’s Rapture, the soundtrack for the ride home.
I couldn’t wait to show it to people and so for the following two years, I did just that. Packing in my lunchbox so as to pop that little sucker out as the other kids were settling in to their fruit cups and various Salisbury steaks at lunchtime. It was my first party trick, and I was proud.
A 10-11 year old armed with an appendix is at worst just kind of annoying and at best, a local hero. I played the part. It was around this time that I also began making mixtapes with a small portable tape player, patiently waiting for your favorite songs to come on and hitting the play AND record buttons at just the right time. Every good appendix needs a soundtrack and I, the master of mixtapes obliged.
My last memory of my appendix was when I was in 6th grade. I had packed the guy up in the Tupperware lunchbox and gone to school. I had a tendency to pack my little tape recorder in the lunchbox as well because it fit, and on the way home from school, Dexy’s Midnight Runners charming the masses on the back of a yellow Bluebird, I got too caught up in the moment. I remember “Too-rah-loo-rah-ing” our way down White Harbor road, the street adjacent to mine and making the turn into my neighborhood. It’s funny how I can remember that but can’t remember where on my street the bus dropped me off. I think darn near in front of my house.
I hopped off with the tape recorder, waved at the losers now forced to continue their ride sans music and went on with my life.
It must have been soon but it feels like longer that, that we realized I had left that lunchbox on a hot, southern Mississippi school bus, the driver stopping at their final destination, hearing the scraping and bouncing of a plastic box in the back. I always envision this bus driver seeing this state of the art Tupperware lunchbox and thinking,”Paydirt! This is a keeper.” I watch them take it into their house, slowly removing the top and wondering what that little bag was. I imagine the formaldehyde expanding with the heat, the plastic taught. I can see that bus driver picking it up and the bag exploding in their hands. A rotten grey white appendix dropping into their sink. The perplexity of the moment jarring their bus driver mind, their wife wondering why the words “Those little f%#kers” is reverberating through her kitchen.
And it still makes me smile.
#hugsandhi5s
