kryptonite

My two younger kids take a lunch to school every day. It's not that they can't get a hot meal in the cafeteria, but they turn their noses up at the school food. To tell the truth I don't blame them a bit. The nutritional info is horrifying and all the food looks like it's been sitting under a heat lamp since the Fourth of July.


So every day we pack up their lunchboxes and send them on their way. I'm lucky in that all of my kids love leftovers, so what we normally do is fill a thermos with (planned) leftovers from dinner the night before. They get a hot lunch, I know they're getting decent food (that they'll actually eat) and everyone is happy.


Well, almost everyone.


Right before school started in the Fall I went to Target and bought them each a super duper thermos that cost a stinking fortune (for a thermos anyway). The neat trick of this thermos is that you nuke it for a minute when you put the food in and it keeps everything nice and hot until lunchtime. When I clean up after dinner at night I fill them up and pop them in the fridge. The next morning I take the lid off, toss it in the microwave and then pack it into a lunchbox.


We've had some problems with the kids being able to get the lids off when they go to eat. They've complained several times and I've always written it off as them giving me a hard time. It's not like I'm screwing the lid on that tight. I just want it to stay on and not drip food all over the place. I did kind of think that maybe the fact that the lid went on to food that was hot could have been the problem. But like I said, I didn't think there really was a problem - besides kids pulling my chain.


Today as we were walking out of school one of the teachers started laughing when she saw me and asked the boys if they'd told me about the day's events. Evidently it had been a dual thermal mishap day and neither one could get them open. They handed them off to teachers, who were also thwarted. In the end, the school janitor had to take both of them to his workroom and put each thermos into a vise to get it opened. When he entered the cafeteria - victorious - both kid's tables applauded.


As we walked to the car Surfer Dude told me that none of the kids in his class believed that his mom was so strong that she could shut the lid on an unopenable thermos. Gumby chimed in that I didn't even need a car to pick them up, and that his friends all assumed I could just leap over buildings to cross the couple of blocks to the school.


Maybe I let that Superwoman label go too soon.