The Symbolism of the Sandwich

On a warm and humid Summer morning circa 1984, four adults and six children, ranging in ages from one to ten, woke up at the crack of dawn in honor of a very special day. It was not only the first day of school, but it was the first day of School in the United States of America. To celebrate the moment, I wore a pair of pants, a shirt which had USA '84 written across the chest, and two crooked pig tails to complete the look. The most exciting accessories were my large purple shoulder bag that served as a backpack and a Hello Kitty plastic lunchbox. Inside the lunchbox was a sandwich my mother made for me to eat for lunch. Now, this sandwich was a BIG DEAL. According to my mother, Americans loved sandwiches, and the creation I was toting in my box was to be symbolic of our desires to integrate into the mainstream culture. Prior to that day, I don't ever remember eating a sandwich. It seemed like such a simple concoction, but I don't ever recall seeing two slices of bread with anything in between them being served to me.

And so, with a very important sandwich in hand, I crossed the street to my school with my family of nine. Because I did not speak any English, I was uncertain what exactly was happening, so I just followed my mother, who took me to a room full of kids with missing teeth like myself. My mother walked away and I remember feeling scared. My teacher, Mrs. Rhodes, signaled me to sit. I clutched to my bag and felt the comfort of the lunchbox as I placed it on the floor next to my leg. I was not sure when I would be able to open it, but it gave me something to look forward to.

The time in between when I was dropped off and lunch time was very frantic. I could not express at the time how I felt, but the experience of not understanding English was like landing at an airport for a connecting flight where you have to find a gate located across the other side of the airport in a span of five minutes. The mental exhaustion made me hungry, and I was desperate to open my lunchbox and scarf down my sandwich.

Lunch time finally came. We were asked to line up and our teacher walked us to this very large room filled with very distinct smells that penetrated my nose and large tables with benches sprawled all over the room. It was noisy and just as chaotic as the airport scene I had described. My teacher pointed at a table and I assumed she was signaling me to sit. So I did. I carried my pretty pink Hello Kitty lunchbox and placed it on the table. There was already a group of kids seated around me, but neither I nor them acknowledged one another. I opened up my lunchbox with both refinement and intensity. Within a split second, a pungent sulfur-like smell escaped my box. Basically it smelled like farts. I snapped that lid so tight, it made a gator wrestler look like an amateur. I looked around hoping no one thought I was the one who released the smell. How could such an event, a symbolic event where I was letting all the American kids sitting around me know I was one of them with my sandwich make such a turn for the worst? To add insult to injury, I was starving. I pondered long and hard (it was probably only 3 seconds) about my next move and decided I needed to face this sandwich. I slowly cracked open the lunchbox enough to peek inside and get a glimpse of its content. My eyeball caught a large lump smack dab in the middle of the two slices of bread. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out my mother made me a hard boiled egg sandwich.

On that infamous first day of school in the United States of America, I became conscious of the relationship food meant to me and those around me. I never ate the sandwich, choosing instead to forgo hunger and risk making noises with my stomach rather than being considered the new girl who ate a fart sandwich. My mother gave up the effort to integrate us into the mainstream via food after both my sister and I returned home from school with an intact boiled egg sandwich. Because we qualified for free and reduced lunch, my siblings and I were introduced to a whole new world of foods by the cafeteria staff. Chicken nuggets, ranch dressing, sloppy joes, tacos, pizza, broccoli, grilled cheese, cereal, French toast sticks and pancakes were amongst some of the new flavor our taste buds experienced. Food was an introduction to our integration into the mainstream culture. Now, it's arguable whether the aforementioned list of foods are representative of the mainstream culture, but as immigrants who had never been exposed to said foods, we felt like we belonged.