"OHMIGOD! You've got a lunch box! That is so cute!!!" I was not in the school playground. I was not 10 years old in pigtails and bobby socks. I was, in fact, at work - in a CBD office with a desk on the 37th floor with a spectacular view, where I thought I was pulling off the corporate look pretty damn well.
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And then I pulled out my lunch box, much to the mirth of my smart and oh-so-on-trend Gen Y colleague. She became so hysterical I briefly wondered whether I hadn't accidentally grabbed the manky old Dorothy the Dinosaur box from the back of the pantry in my pre-caffeinated morning rush. But this was just a standard lunch box - the type with little compartments for fruit, and even a tiny tub with a lid for dressing.
The giggles and eye-rolling continued. And, for a moment, I felt like the class nerd, the geek, the loser in the playground whose mum never packs cool snacks, rarely hands over tuckshop money, forbids any film classified above PG and refuses to buy trendy clothes because "next month you'll hate it and want something completely different".
Loser! But then I brushed off the 10-year-old still blushing inside me and explained that one day, should she choose to have kids, lunch boxes would reappear in her life, too, along with a rainbow avalanche of drink bottles every time she opened a kitchen cupboard.
And she'd even come to appreciate them, because kids also bring financial responsibilities, of the type that make the designer baguette with pork belly, Asian slaw, pickled ginger, daikon, sweet chilli jam and mayo, available at the local hipster deli, a rare indulgence.Then I marched off to make myself a cheese and salad sandwich.
Having kids brings many blessings. These days, I am that mum who doesn't care what you think, rather than the mortified young girl who does. And I'll take that freedom over pork belly and Asian slaw any day.
Christine Jackman
