Friday Follies - Lunch Time Traditions Yabba Dabba Do!

We were chatting at work the other day about movies, and someone said that they loved the old movies where the characters were driving and just kept driving past the same scenery over and over.  It reminded me of The Flintstones.  Fred used to run through the house and would run past the same doorway and plant over and over again.  It looked like the house might be really big, but in the next scene you would see that it had a living room and a bedroom - that's it.   Other classic cartoons were the same and we loved them all - The Jetsons, Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo.

It felt like The  Flintstones were on TV every day of my early school days.  I remember watching the original Little Rascals (remember how much Alfalfa loved Darla?), but it was almost always the Flintstones. We would come home for lunch - does anyone do that any more? - and Mum would  have packet chicken noodle soup and a plate of Saltine crackers (with butter so that you could squish them together to make worms) ready for us.  So yummy on a cold winter's day. 

Those lunches must have made an impact - whenever I hear 'Flintstones, meet the Flintstones...' I can almost taste that chicken noodle soup.  Sometimes Mum would put a dash of curry powder into the soup to fancy it up a bit.  Yup, that was 70's cuisine for you.

Once the show was over, Mum would bundle us back up into our winter clothes - warm enough for Edmonton blizzards and puffy enough to feel like the Michelin man - and send us back on our way to school.

Not me, but an
accurate representation

One day in Grade 2 when the bell sounded for lunch, I left the school and made my way home.  This was when we attended Wye School in Sherwood Park. That has to be the most confusing name for a school.  People would ask where I went to school, and I would reply 'Wye'.   Then they would say that they just wanted to know.  I would say 'Wye'.....you can see where this is going.  It always took some time to figure out that I wasn't be a smart ass (that was my brother's department) and that I was trying to politely answer their question.  I finally figured out that I should say 'Wye School', but hey, I was in Grade 2, this kind of logic doesn't come quickly to a young child.

I digress. I arrived home, only to find that Mum wasn't there and the house was very quiet.  Being the good child that I was, I managed to make myself lunch (possibly a peanut butter sandwich which was my lunch staple when I had to take lunches to school), pour a glass of milk and sit myself down in front of the TV to watch The Flintstones.  I couldn't understand why the show wasn't on, so I watched something else, ate my lunch and put my dirty dishes into the sink. 

Then Mum arrived home.  Whoops.

It seems that it wasn't lunch at all - I had assumed that the recess bell was the lunch bell.  Mum just had a laugh and took me back to school.  I assume that there was a bit of a panic when it was discovered that I wasn't back in class.  It was all a bit embarrassing, and I needed a way to make the other kids forget what I had done.  Fortunately I was a resourceful know-it-all, with an untapped skill for deflection.

As small children do, Scott and I had quizzed Mum on where babies come from.  Being the good mother, she gave an age-appropriate explanation, with an admonishment not to tell the other kids as their parents probably wanted to explain it to them in their own way.  

Everyone knows that being a holder of knowledge means that you are a holder of power.  I certainly had the power as I gathered my classmates around me in the playground and with a great sense of theatre described with a horrified expression where babies came from.  Yabba Dabba Doo!  My recess debacle was forgotten.