Losing my lunch

The worst Mondays have to be the day after a long weekend, or, as I’m fond of putting it, when Monday happens on Tuesday.

This particular Monday-on-a-Tuesday didn’t start well. I staggered in to work at 6 AM, and my boss said, well, let’s just say he didn’t say I looked well.

At 11 AM, lunchtime finally came. My lunchtime routine for years now has been to bring a frozen meal from home and microwave it. Everyone knows it. But not today, I didn’t. I went looking for my lunch, and couldn’t find it. “What are you doing?” my boss asked. “And why do you have your coat?”

“I lost my lunch,” I told my boss. That phrase has some history in my parts.

One day last fall, a now-departed coworker–we’ll call her Layla–came up to my boss and informed him that she had lost her lunch.

“Oh, did you put your name on it?” he asked, trying to be sympathetic. “I swear, some of the people in this office, they’ll eat anything if nobody’s name is on it!”

Layla explained to him that “losing your lunch” is a euphemism for being sick. A particular kind of being sick. So he learned something that day before sending her home.

But in my case, that wasn’t what I meant. My lunch wasn’t on my desk. It wasn’t in the fridge. And it wasn’t in the freezer, where it belonged.

There were only two other places it could be, which was why I had my coat. I grabbed my coat intending to trudge out to my vanpool van, hoping maybe I’d left it there, and not in my car at the commuter lot, 30 minutes away. It was 30 degrees out, so spending the morning in the van would have been almost as good for my lunch as being in the freezer.

Upon reaching the van, I realized I couldn’t even remember what seat I’d been sitting in. I told you Mondays-on-a-Tuesday are rough.

My third guess turned out to be right. There it was, in the next-to-last row.I grabbed it, thankful that I’d had the presence of mind not to leave it in my car at the commuter lot.

So I grabbed my lunch, then walked back up to the office. “Found it,” I said, holding my lunch up triumphantly. “Don’t call me Layla.”

Yeah, really. Don’t call me Layla. Even if I so desperately want to answer her phone, the next time it rings, in the deepest voice I can possibly muster: “Hello, this is Layla.”