Forty-cent lunch

            The other day, a few coins in my pocket sent me back to grade school.
            It was a quarter, a dime, and a nickel. Instinctively, I lined them up by size, which doesn’t conform to value, a fact which frustrated me even at age six. I remember carrying my size-ordered/value-disordered stack of three coins, wrapped in foil, through the lunch line, and paying the lady at the register: a hamburger, chips, pint of milk (so hard to bend and pry open!), a dish of sliced pears in syrup. Or if I brought lunch, I carried a nice straight, uncomplicated stack of four pennies, just for milk.
            I loved lunch. I liked filling my burger or my tuna sandwich with potato chips, probably because Lisa Meyer introduced me to this novel culinary innovation. I liked the table chatter, which had to stop if the giant traffic light up front went from green to yellow to red.
            I still like lunch, but there’s much less chatter.
 
My 60th year in 60,000 words
Day 258: 164 words, TOTAL = 41,801; 18,199 remaining