Hey kid, whatcha got in that brown paper bag?

One Chicago school has banned lunches brought from home, the Chicago Tribune reports. Administrators at Little Village Academy, a public school, say the policy is all in the name of good health. Principal Elsa Carmona told the Tribune she created the policy after watching students bring "bottles of soda and flaming hot chips" for their lunch.

Once Sarah Palin receives news of this story, I'm sure she'll be at that school with chocolate chip cookies and introduce those unfortunate kids to freedom.

I gotta say, I couldn't agree more with this school's decision.  In middle school, the lunches your parent packed for you could either make you or break you.  One lunch faux pas and you'll be eating your lunch in the empty stall while flushing every 3 minutes to fool the other bathroom goers.

Why should kids be judged by the lunch that their guardians choose for them? I would usually only judge the other students if they sucked in gym class, if their art class projects looked like an orginal Stevie Wonder creation, or if you found it necessary to drop your pants to your ankles while emptying your bladder in the urinal (you know who you are).

My mom wanted me to live a healthy lifestyle, so my lunches usually consisted of a sandwich with a nutri-grain bar.  I certainly wasn't bringing much to the trading table.  The kid with the Dunkaroos or Gushers was usually the coolest guy at lunch. People would pretty much give anything short of a hand-job to be able to dip miniature kangaroos into a sugary paste, and for most girls, it would be another 10 years or so until they could experience a burst of juices in their mouth similar to the sensation that eating Gushers provided.

If your parents let you eat these sugary snacks, you were the top businessman at lunch.  You understood the economics of the cafeteria.  One group that had a tough time at the lunchroom trading floor were the Asians. This is the only place where Asians have an unfavorable trade agreement.  It was always hard for them to try to trade their miniature juice box with a picture of a cartoon turtle holding a catcher's mitt for a pack of saltines with cheddar cheese spread and a little red stick to smear it on with. (I for one enjoyed the delicacies of the Asian market, and embraced the multicultural atmosphere of the lunch room.)

If I could relive my youth, I'd eat Lunchables every day.  Where else can you squeeze tomato paste out of a packet onto a piece of cardboard and call it pizza, or stack a piece of cheese and miniature turkey roll on a Ritz cracker and call it a sandwich? 

So kids, if you're reading this, enjoy these snacks while you can.  Once you become my age, eating fruit by the foot during a quarterly earnings meeting can have negative effects on your annual review.