My Lunchbox Moment
*Note: I originally published this piece in November 2016 on my now-defunct personal blog, The Truth About Nothing. I have refurbished the piece for re-publication on Room D113.*
Lunchbox moment (noun): an instance of extreme embarrassment caused by the introduction of an unfamiliar ethnic food in the presence of peers unfamiliar with said food.
Every day, my mother would pack my lunchbox for me with what I considered to be the prototypical American lunch: a Capri Sun, a bag of chips, a fruit cup, and a sandwich with white bread. I had persuaded my mother to buy those specific items from the grocery store because I had seen many of my classmates eating similar food every day for lunch themselves, and I wanted nothing more than to fit in with them. My classmates were predominantly white and came from relatively well-off households, typical of a suburban elementary school in Northern Virginia. I, on the other hand, was similar in every way except for my tan skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. No one ever treated me differently because I was Asian, but I always felt a need to prove that I was just like everyone else.
When I was in class, I usually felt fairly comfortable because there was a clear sense of order. The teacher was the undisputed leader of the class, and each one of us was equal in the eyes of academia. But as soon as we entered the cafeteria for lunch, a pecking order was immediately established among the students that had little to do with intelligence. Under that harshly fluorescent light, every child was vulnerable to judgment from his or her peers based solely on the contents of their lunch. Every day, I would quietly slide into my seat at the table to eat with my friends, content to silently listen to their conversations and nibble on my food. All the while, I furiously took mental notes about what everyone else was eating so that I could report back to my mother.
One day, I slipped into my usual seat and took my sandwich out of my lunchbox. I was expecting the typical combination of deli meats or peanut butter and jelly. To my horror, and to the surprise of my lunchmates, there appeared to be tufts of dirty blonde hair sprouting between my two slices of white bread. I hurriedly stuffed the sandwich back into my lunchbox, but the damage was done. “Is that a…hair sandwich?!” crowed one of the boys. News of my revolting eating habits spread like wildfire, and classmate after classmate began staring at me. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach and I clenched my hands so tightly that my nails left imprints on my palms. I tried desperately to explain that what everyone thought was hair was actually a food from my Asian background called ruốc, dried pulled pork that resembles coarse cotton. But my meek explanation was drowned out by the derision of my peers, and my face flushed in embarrassment. I angrily zipped my lunchbox closed, angry at my mother for dashing my campaign to fit in.
The most frustrating aspect of my lunchbox moment is that I actually wanted to eat the sandwich. I loved ruốc, along with a litany of other Vietnamese cuisines that I would ravenously devour at home. On top of that frustration, I was ashamed at my anger towards my mother. She had seen me eat handfuls of ruốc at home, and simply wanted her son to eat a lunch that she knew I would enjoy. But she did not quite understand that as a first generation American, I was tasked with achieving a precarious balance between the culture of my parents’ homeland and the culture of America. Sometimes, that meant sacrificing the culture of one or the other.
Over ten years have passed since my lunchbox moment. Hoping to see some progress in the diversification of foods offered in cafeterias today, I looked up the lunch menu at my old elementary school. To my dismay, the menu is almost completely unchanged from the menu I remember. Almost every food is stereotypically American; I saw little ethnic diversification in the weekly offerings of corn dog bites, crust-less peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and pizza. A simple lunch menu in a local elementary school might not seem like much to most people, but to my childhood self, it contributed to what I believed to be the American way. I believed that in order to fit in with everyone else, I had to eat like everyone else. And if no one else was eating ruốc, then I was surely never going to admit that I ate it.
One could chalk my lunchbox moment up as just a typical instance of child-to-child nastiness, but I believe that there is a deeper message that is still relevant today. From a young age, I realized that in order to fit in, I needed to reject the distinctive flavors of Vietnamese culture and conform to the dominant white-bread America. Despite increasing public tolerance for minority groups in recent years, white American culture still reigns dominant throughout the country. Even in schools, where children are still forming their own personal beliefs, minority cultures are overshadowed and forgotten. Administrators and teachers can preach the merits of diversity all they want in the classroom, but if there is none in perhaps the most important time period of the day in terms of social development, then their work is for naught. The potential consequences of inaction are daunting; first-generation children run the risk of not only leaving the lunchroom hungry due to the embarrassment from their lunchbox moments, but starved of their cultural backgrounds as well.
