I know, I should have written this about a week ago, but anyway better late than never... heres a slightly different angle on the subject of brown bag lunches.
I'm still a US citizen, but I moved to Canada in 1970 out of fervent opposition to the Vietnam War. I still live there now, quite happily except for regular bouts of shame about politicians such as our Bozo-the-Clown Mayor of Toronto and our Bush-Lite Conservative government.
Anyway, during my working career, I did a bunch of different jobs, but for about a dozen years I somehow wound up teaching elementary school French.
A requirement of the job was taking summer courses to improve my teaching skills, and it was actually a lot of fun sharing ideas and stories with other French teachers.
One summer I got to talking to a fellow teacher who had just come back from doing a year long teaching exchange in some little town in France. Her husband, who I didn't meet, was also a teacher, and he was also doing an exchange, so they were able to take their whole family with them to France.
She related how they arrived in mid-summer and began to meet neighbours and people in the community. But the last day of summer inevitably arrived and so that night the whole family went in the kitchen and prepared bag lunches with sandwiches, apples, etc for every member.
After a busy first morning of school, at about noon she was paged over the PA system--- the principal of the school wanted to see her IMMEDIATELY!!!!
She was bit apprehensive, well aware that the French have a stricter, more authoritarian style of education than our Canadian system.
Upon arrival to the principal's office, there was the principal standing behind the desk, hands on hips. Displayed on the desk were the contents of the brown bag lunches that had been so diligently packed the night before.
"What is THIS?" demanded the principal.
"I don't understand, Madame. These are my children's lunches. Is there a problem?"
The principal forcefully swept the lunches off the desk and into a waiting garbage pail.
"This isn't lunch. This is CHILD ABUSE!"
"But... I don't understand..."
"In France, no decent mother would ever make her child eat GARBAGE like this! Follow me!"
And the principal led the teacher to the school cafeteria, where every child was being served a free hot lunch--- of delicious restaurant-quality French food!
"THIS is how CIVILIZED people eat, Madame!"
*****
Needless to say, there were no more brown bag lunches for the rest of the year!
Now wouldn't it be funny if somebody told a conservative politician THIS story?