Abundant sunshine. High near 65F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph..

A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 47F. Winds light and variable.

Now that school is back in session, I’m hearing warnings from health scaredy-cats about making sure lunches brought to school from home are packed safely.

Make sure they’re in thermal lunch boxes with ice packs. Don’t leave cold cuts out for more than two hours. I think that, if it were possible, they’d have the homemade lunch hand delivered to the cafeteria just before eating.

When I was in middle school, which, in those days, we called junior high to distinguish us from those mature paragons in high school, we always brought our lunch from home. In brown paper bags.

My mother always made mine: two sandwiches of any variety, as long as they included peanut butter. One of my favorites was peanut butter, shrimp and mayonnaise. She’d chop up the shrimp left over from last night’s dinner, mix it with mayonnaise and spread it on bread plastered with peanut butter. Yum.

Once, she made a suggestion she thought would make it healthier and more nutritious for me. She suggested chopping up some celery and mixing it in with the shrimp and mayonnaise.

“Celery!” I bellowed. “Are you crazy? Celery has no flavor whatsoever. I have this shrimp and mayonnaise, and you want to replace a certain amount of that very tasty concoction with something that has no flavor at all? You want to take up the space occupied by something that tastes that good with something that actually subtracts flavor from the overall mixture?”

Mom got the point. “All right,” she said. “I was just thinking of your health.”

“Look, Mom,” I continued, to underscore my point. “Say the shrimp, mayonnaise and peanut butter have a taste total of 10. Now you add chunks of celery, which have zero. You’re bringing down the taste total from a very desirable 10 to a barely tolerable 6. I’m having a hard enough time putting up with school to begin with. You want to further compromise my lunch hour?”

She was a lot smarter than I was. She was smart enough never again to suggest diluting my shrimp salad with celery.

Almost every day, one of the guys would forget to bring his lunch to school.

The most frequent forgetter was John Wayne Griffin.

“I forgot my lunch again,” John Wayne would say. “Who’s got something to contribute?”

“John Wayne, you’re in luck,” I told him one day. “I have half a peanut butter, shrimp and mayonnaise sandwich you can have. That should tickle your taste buds.”

Yuch!” he said. “I haven’t eaten in five hours now. I wouldn’t touch that if I hadn’t eaten in five days.”

“But my mother crafted it with her homemade shrimp salad,” I said.

“Bobby boy” he replied, “Your mother could have wrapped it in $20 bills and I still wouldn’t touch it.”

Our school wasn’t air conditioned in those days. A sandwich could roast in that skinny locker. I’d picture the peanut butter, shrimp and mayonnaise all melting together as if it had been spooned out of the same jar as one ingredient and poured onto the bottom slice of bread before being all squashed together with the top one.

Then, as the sandwich would sit on the top shelf of the locker in that heat, I’d picture the slices of bread browning and hardening as if they’d been sitting upright in a toaster. By lunchtime, I’d open the bag, unwrap the sandwich and have to blow on it before I could put it into my mouth.

It was a good thing the bread toasted, because, otherwise, on an especially hot, muggy day, the contents of the sandwich would saturate the bread and I’d have to borrow a fork from the cafeteria to eat it.

So I understand the doomsayers’ warning about keeping the kids’ lunches safe. But I can’t help but think they’re being overly cautious.

Look at me. I’m in my supposed sunset years, and I still feel as if the sun is just coming up in spite of years of melted peanut butter, shrimp and mayonnaise in my locker.

Send your kids off to school dragging a refrigerator behind them if you must. But, every now and then, reward them with a peanut butter, mayonnaise and shrimp sandwich sitting in a toasty warm locker for a few hours. And put in a few extra napkins.

Bob Grady worked for the Press-Republican newsroom in a variety of positions for almost 40 years, retiring as editor in 2011. For 20 of those years, he wrote a weekly column, often based on his maladroit acquaintances, including his wife’s cats and his friend Ted. He still lives in Plattsburgh.

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