lunch boxes
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lunch boxes -
What do Airpods, Goldfish, and Baymax have in common? Slinging an Airpods case across their back, opening a Goldfish lunchbox for mid-morning snacks, and unzipping Baymax’s head for Barbie notebooks, students transform the containers of daily life into mediums of self-expression.
Claire Zhou | photography
Read more to hear directly from one student at Northview, Olivia Chang, and a (creative, inspired, and fictional) vignette I wrote as to why she uses it.
Taste of Home | photography
“I really like fish, and I didn’t get a kiddy backpack for senior year. Also, this lunchbox was the perfect size and was kiddy slaytastic. My mom got it from free thing where buy two giant goldfish things from Publix ten years ago. I didn’t use it for a long time because I thought it was stupid. Now have grown up and now I think is not stupid. Represents that like fish and I am lowkey a kid.”
— Olivia Chang
Creative Interpretation (because this is litmag!)
Variations on Infantile (a)Mnesia
When I was two years old, I wanted to fly. But my wings had not yet grown. So I made Goldfish fly instead, its carotenoid tail propelling its smile along my orbit, drawing a gleaming smile on my face. “Goo goo ga ga. Wee!” I said, before chomping down on this flying cracker with my baby teeth.
My mother’s eyes watered with joy: she knew that the Goldfish sign meant that though her daughter would one day grow wings, she would not forget the orbit of love around her. “Goo goo ga ga,” I must have said excitedly in my stroller, breaking its straps and pointing to the large gallon-carton on the Publix shelf. But today, there was more: a free bright pink lunchbox in the shape of a Goldfish, its eyelashes and smile and tail flying by my side as my mother strolled us down the parking lot.
As I grew older, I thought the Goldfish lunch box was stupid. And maybe it is. But I have come to realize that although I have grown the wings to fly in school and achieve my dreams beyond, I still come back to my small Goldfish lunch box, to the food and love that my mother packs for me every day, to the orbit of people that I love, to the community that I have found. I will not forget the orbit a Goldfish once flew around me; I will not forget the orbits of our Northview community and beyond that continues to inspire me to fly.
Web Page Design by CLAIRE ZHOU