Lunchbox Culture;

So, I bring a lunchbox to class. I like to pack my lunch. I don't want to pay mass amounts of money for small amounts of low quality food. I don't want to make extra trash. I like my tuna-fish and pesto sandwiches. I like my lunchbox. ect. ect. ect.
Well, on the first day of class (which is scheduled to start at 9:30) I walk in at 9:15, only to see that my entire class is already there. It was like the college equivalent of the coming to school naked dream. There was one seat open towards the middle of the class, so I fought my way there, trying to hide my obvious embarrassment. My precious lunchbox slapped against every chair I passed! Oh god!
And now, due no doubt to that embarrassing scene, everyone in class talks to me about my lunchbox. It's just a lunchbox. We're taking a class on food. I like good food. I dont want to eat on campus. I think it's ironic when we're talking about how corn is ruining american soil, to see people from my class rush out to munch down on corn chips and corn syrup soda. I pack a lunch. My boyfriend packed my lunch. I like my lunchbox. How many excuses do I have to give? It's not like I have a tattoo of my lunchbox on my forehead. Do I have to be like the kid in middle school with the backpack on wheels, forever remembered for my accessory?
My solution: a lunchbox culture. I've seen those awesome retro ones, with wonderwoman or i love lucy or the wizard of oz. Hell, there can even be lunchbox sub-cultures, to underwrite the lunchbox culture as a whole. But this way, at least I wont be the only kid with a lunchbox...

Walt Whitman, "This Compost"

1
Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.
O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
of sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its
tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
catching disease.
Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
from them at last.