Debbie Briggs’ mother loved her. We could tell from the thinly sliced mock-chicken loaf sandwiches on extra thin bread (wrapped excessively in Reynold's wrap). Single-handedly, Debbie Briggs had made mock chicken fashionable. This was not unrelated to the fact that when Debbie Briggs' mom sent cakes to the school for special parties they were 3-layered and in a big crystal cake house.

When my grandmother sent cakes they were sometimes still warm.

Me: "I need a cake for today."

My grandmother: "What? It's already 8:20! Good grief. (Preheat the stove) Can you take fudge instead?"

I shake my head no. "It needs to be cake! It needs to be three layers!" My voice is cracking. (This is impossible. I am *not* going to cry.)

My grandmother: Chocolate or vanilla? Or how about shortcake?

Me: JUST FORGET IT!!!

The stakes were high.

Every day for seven years I ate salmon sandwiches for lunch. They were wrapped in waxed paper (roll eyes) and made a week ahead and frozen. Sometimes they would be a bit icy. I would never trade. My sandwiches were crustless, perfect, dependable. Never any lettuce. Not spectacular. Twice in those seven years I agreed to a change and took hamburger patties shoved in a thermos. Twice was enough - I went back to salmon. I might have wanted to go mother-to-mother in the cake competition, but I knew that I just wasn't a Debbie-mock-chicken-sandwich type person.

No one looked at me and whispered "wow - look at all that tin foil," but I seemed to inhabit a lucky territory outside of the sandwich 'rules'-- meaning no one *wanted* salmon or waxed paper, but I wasn't sent to eat lunch alone in the field house, either. It was an uneasy relationship.