Eggbites

I walked into the school office and made my way to my desk, hands full of supplies and folders. It had been a busy, loud morning. I was ready for solace and food. I put everything away and went to the fridge. 

“Hi,” I said to my friend - her desk was right around the corner from mine; it had been placed in the back along with the sink and fridge and a table of “stuff” that accumulates in a school. We exchanged a few pleasantries and I told her about something annoying that had happened, and told her that I’d be better after my break. 

Then I opened the fridge and to my surprise and disappointment, I did not see my cheese. Not only that, but someone had moved my eggbites to the freezer section, a weird and entirely unnecessary thing to do. Had the fridge been packed, I might understand the need to move things. “Who steals cheese? And who just moves other people’s things?” I said to my friend.

“I don’t know.” she said, kindness in her voice. 

We did have a thief, but so far that person had stolen from classrooms and the upstairs lounge. I sighed as I pulled the eggbites out. One was partially frozen - the other somehow was not. This would mean a longer heating time for one. This wasn’t a huge deal, but I was by now “hangry” and the inconvenience (especially on our short breaks) seemed worse than it really was.  I ranted about the strangeness of  people moving other people’s things while the microwave did its work. Thankfully, my friend and I have that sort of relationship - let it out, get support, laugh about it later. 

When my little paper plate was ready, I smiled overly brightly and said, “Okay! Now I’m going to my car. Where it’s quiet! And I can enjoy these!”

"Okay! See you later. Enjoy your lunch!" she said.

I went to the car, unlocked it, tossed my bag into the passenger’s seat and carefully climbed in. I placed the mini paper plate on the dash and unzipped my bag. I usually call my husband on my break. Would he want to hear about the injustice of stolen/moved food? Maybe. But my phone was not the first thing I saw.

No, instead I saw my eggbites that I’d failed to remove from my bag that morning, that had never been placed in the fridge. Farther down was a sorry, room-temperature cheese stick.

Well. So, now what? I could run back inside and try to find out whose food I’d taken, but that could take a while (possibly all day), and  surely no one would want it now that I’d touched it. No, the best thing to do was to just eat, then find the person and offer to have lunch delivered.  I ate those eggbites, one guilty bite after another, the entire time with a dread of the embarrassment that was to come with admitting that I had taken someone’s lunch. What if that person was at that moment looking vainly in the fridge, his or her stomach growling with hunger while I sat in my car eating but certainly not enjoying the food?

I entered the school again and went straight to another friend, the school nurse, whose office was also in that area. “Megan,” I said, “Who else here uses the back fridge?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

I explained what I had accidentally done, and she burst out laughing. Laughing! “Megan!" I exclaimed. "It's not funny! Somebody here is going to be hungry!”

Of course this only made her laugh harder and louder. It is so easy to laugh when you are not the one who might have to send out a very humbling all-staff email. About this time my friend whose desk is around the corner, my dear friend who had let me vent about whatever had happened that morning, who had listened to  me as I complained that someone had taken my cheese, who had with empathy watched and listened as I expressed my frustration over my lunch being moved, leaned around the corner  and (with a smile she could not hide) said, “Marla, those were my eggbites.”