Lunch packing role reversal

Taking the bar exam requires arduous preparation, intense concentration and a calm, resolute mentality.

Naturally, I decided to take my four children with me on the trip.

All the other parents I know from my graduating class purposefully kept their children away from them in the final days leading up to the test. I know one guy who booked a hotel room next to the testing center four days before the test. Seems smart! I decided to take a road trip with my kids and share a rental house with them. We even brought the dog! Because constant barking at random noises helps to solidify mountains of legal rules and theory in the brain.

Thanks to the efforts of my wife, the kids remained consistently entertained and mostly nondisruptive. Or at least no more disruptive than they were at home during the first seven weeks of bar prep. The dog still barked at everything.

This last school year, all four of my kids packed their own lunches, finally relieving one of the core parenting stressors on a given day. It wasn’t always the most nutritious lunch, but at least I didn’t have to be the one rummaging through the pantry for crackers and applause pouches.

Because of the sheer volume of children in the house, my lunch packing usually amounted to the bare minimum. Even when I packed more than three to four things, the lunchbox often returned home with two to three half-eaten items and a totally melted ice pack, eliminating the possibility of eating the leftovers the next day. I’ve lost at least a dozen spoons, with all of them presumably landing in the school trash alongside the half-eaten yogurt.

I never added any handwritten notes to their lunches either. Who has time for such things? I wouldn’t count on the kids even noticing the notes, especially if it became lodged under a bag of Oreos.

Now, compare my efforts with the lunches my two daughters packed for me on both exam days (yes, the bar exam cruelly stretches across two horrendous days). They either wanted to relieve some of the pre-test jitters the night before, or their mom bribed them with a Slurpee. Regardless, it was professional packing.

Each day’s lunch contained more than 12 items each. Do my kids think I need 10,000 calories for lunch? No, instead, I learned from my 10-year-old daughter that THIS was the proper way to pack a decent lunch. She values variety, high quantities and abundant Welch’s fruit snacks. Apparently, I’d been shorting her on her lunches over the years.

The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were reliably stuffed (because you don’t want to eat anything too adventurous during the test; they don’t stop the clock for bathroom breaks). Also, they gave me four ice packs. My yogurt was delightfully frigid, though they gave one of those large “serving” spoons that almost didn’t fit into the cup.

To top it all off, I received an encouraging note in my lunch box each day, and all four kids provided words of encouragement (and doodles of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, naturally). The trick is to put the note on top, above the bag of Oreos. You can’t miss it then.

I have no idea how I performed on the test. My fingers hurt from typing and my neck ached from being hunched over a scantron sheet for multiple hours. It’s all a blur, honestly.

But I do know that my afternoon sessions began with a welcome jolt of love and support (and a slight sugar high from all those fruit snacks).

•••

Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and parent to four kids, ages 8-14. He is tired. He can be reached at [email protected].

      

      

    The Exhausted Dad