Some Things Send You Back

I was at my mom's house this weekend and she offered me some thermoses that she doesn't use any more because she knows that I pack lunches every day for Daniel. I said that's great, but you know we're now concerned about the plastic. The thermoses I have are all plastic, and I am going to look for the old fashioned, glass lined ones. So off mom goes and finds me an old, tall, glass lined thermos. It's the kind I picture when I think of the guys at the construction site, sitting on the support beam suspended high in the air, taking a lunch break with their old metal lunch boxes beside them. The thermos is more than a foot high and sports a retro, corrugated metal skin.

Then mom gave me another prize -- my old thermos from when I was a kid -- the Campus Queen! I used to have the lunch box as well, and I remember it had a Campus Queen game on the back.

I feel like a kid again when I'm holding this. I *am* the campus queen, with her puffy helmet hair and tiara. My man has perfect hair and a shiny tux, and he's given me a dozen roses, which I'm going to carry around all night.

Look at the small couple on the front of the thermos, so inferior, so jealous. Her dress is not fancy enough. She has no flowers. Her man stands behind her, not even holding her waist, secretly looking for a place to sneak out and catch the game on his transistor radio, which he has hidden in a pocket of his cheap suit. There's another tiny couple you can't see, flaming redhead with too much eye makeup, an inattentive date.

Look at the smug smile on Campus Queen's face, her cat-like eyes searching out every other woman in the room, finding them somehow wanting. Who else can carry off that fur-trimmed cape?

She may be small-town royalty, but there's nothing wrong with being the big fish in a small pond.

Yeah. All that from a thermos.