The Choice to Be Good People: Delivering Lunches During Covid-19

Last delivery at the 14-plex (photo Courtesy of Ellen Harris)

I walked down the steps of the fourteen plex in Unalakleet hoping that it would be the last time I delivered lunches there- not because I minded doing that job, but because delivering lunches meant my students were not in their classrooms.

            And honestly, delivering lunches had been a great job.  I now know where a large number of my students live, and to a small extent, a little more of how they live.  I delivered lunches to houses with moms and dads, some with uncles, some to grandmas or grandpas, some to friends, and a couple to guardians.

            Early in the process, my nephew and work partner, Merle, voiced some frustration, “Doesn’t seem to matter what good we try to do, people still complain.”

            “We are going to be good people and good to people,” I voiced what had become my mantra.

            “Okay,” he said shaking his head, “even if they aren’t good to us?”

            “Even then,” I smiled.

            “We’re going to be good people,” he repeated and we finished delivering that day’s lunches. 

            It was a decision we made and continued to repeat to each other pretty much every day.

            “Good to be working,” he smiled on one occasion as the talk had been of all the people in our country unemployed.

            Merle and I pretty much lived the post office’s creed as we tiptoed around icy puddles, pushed stuck trucks out of snow banks, ran to houses through the rain, and were often greeted by dogs tied up outside of the houses.

            “You can deliver this one,” Merle handed me a lunch and looked out the passenger side window at a large interested dog tied to the porch of a house that was on our list.

Middle School Drive Through

            On top of handing out lunches, our school district had decided to do distance learning through packets that kids would pick up from the school.  The middle school had set up a “drive through” window where parents would pull up and get the work for the day.  Elementary and high school both had something similar.  Those who could not make it to the building had their packets delivered with the lunches on Monday.  This made Mondays pretty interesting.

            “How many lunches here?” I asked Merle at one of the stops. 

            “Three.”

            “I can only find two homework packets for this house, though,” I pointed out.

            “Maybe that is all of them?” Merle questioned.

            On the other side of town, we would find the other packet mixed in with another kid’s.

            “Guess we go back,” Merle would smile.

            Mondays were also pizza days.  As part of an incentive program for students doing their work at home, names would be put into a hat and drawn for Papa Murphy Pizzas.  The back seat of the truck would be piled with three boxes of student packets, 30+ sack lunches, and five large pizzas.

            “We’re pizza delivery guys now,” Merle laughed as we dropped off the first one at a very happy child’s house.

            As if pizza, packets, and lunches were not enough, Merle and I were approached about adding two more things to the back of the truck.

            “Dad,” Ellen said looking up at me, “can we help you deliver lunches?”

            “Yeah,” Harper, her partner in crime, echoed, “can we go deliver lunches?”

Harper Ellis lunch delivery apprentice (Photo Courtesy of Ellen Harris)

            So, Merle and I gained a couple of apprentices who would count lunches out and hand them to us from the back seat as we stopped for deliveries.  Granted, as three-year-olds, there were times when they got distracted, but for the most part they were great help.

            “Oohhhwoowoo,” Ellen and Harper yelled out the window.

            “Looks like we have gained a siren to aid in our deliveries,” I commented to Merle.

            Each day, we continued repeating our mantra: we were going to be good people.

            As we were backing out of the driveway of our last delivery for the day, I caught the eye of a person glaring at me.  I waved… I’ve always been a little slow on the uptake with things like that.  He continued to glare and so I stopped, rolled down my window, and said hi.

            The complaint I received is not really important.  It had been a long morning, a long week, and we had been into the whole Covid thing for what felt like an eternity.  I thanked the person for the input, rolled up my window and began backing up again, grumbling under my breath.

            “We are going to be good people,” Merle said quietly without looking at me.

I continued my grumbling.

 “Even when people are not good to us,” he added.

            It was a choice we had to remind each other of from time to time.

            For the most part, people were happy to see us.  The kids were strangely happy for the homework we were bringing them.  My own daughter would jump up and down cheering as I brought hers in each week.  She was excited to see what her teacher packed for her.

            “See, Dad,” she said earnestly, “my teacher hasn’t forgotten me and still loves me.”

            Kids would run out to greet the truck as we pulled into certain neighborhoods.

            “We need to play the ice cream truck music,” Merle joked.

            “Yay,” the kids would yell, “the lunch truck is here.”

            The last day of deliveries came and went.  School, though arguably over for quite some time, came to its last day.

            We still don’t know what school will look like in the fall when the first day is upon us.  If Merle and I are back to delivering lunches, we’ll happily tackle the job.

            Our hope is, though, that we will be welcoming our kids back through the doors and maybe we can apply what we learned through what is hopefully the only pandemic we see in our lifetimes.  We’ll be good people.

Evidently mirror selfies are a skill learned early in life (Photo courtesy Ellen Harris)