Sweet Revenge

My mother was a wonderful cook. Sweets. All recipes were passed down through the family.

My grandmother was also a fine maker of sugar delights. She and my grandfather owned a sugar cane farm in Queensland, Australia.

I still remember her opening the pantry door, to find fat brown hessian bags filled with raw brown sugar. She would take a small plastic toy shovel and fill a bowl. Then the fun would begin. During the school holidays, that old farmhouse reeked with the smell of home-cooked goodness. Every type of biscuit you could imagine. Some with nuts, some with fruit, sugar-coated, cream-filled, soft centre, crunchy, corn-flake, just Heaven for a kid.

Mind you, she was no whiz with the main meals. Tough, dry, tasteless steak, vegies, boiled to death, no salt, no pepper and no butter. At least she made up for it on the desert side of things!

My father was a policeman. A heavy beer drinker, and food lover. His drinking though, meant that he quite often missed dinner-time, leading him to think that Mum’s cooking was not as good as it actually was. On more than one occasion, I recall him cussing at her for a tough T-bone steak that he re-heated at midnight. One even went flying across the kitchen. However, I don’t ever remember him insulting her deserts. In fact, like a naughty little kid, he would raid the biscuit tin when no one was around, quite often leading to a family argument the next morning as to who the culprit was. Of course, my brother and I would get the blame, inevitably resulting in zero delights for our school lunch boxes.

I really used to look forward to what Mum would pack in that lunch box. There would be the standard Vegemite, peanut butter, or Devon and tomato sauce sandwich and some fruit for 'Big Lunch'. Morning tea or 'Little Lunch' was always some delicious home-cooked speciality. It could be a lamington, biscuit, cake, cream-filled cherry blossoms, slice, they were all just as delectable as each other. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

It would have been in the late 1970s. At 10.15 am on the dot, the morning tea bell rang out at Scarborough State School. Everyone ran to their bags. This was a time when tuck-shop (canteen) was a once-a-week special occasion for most kids, myself included, so almost all of us had lunches packed for them.

With eager anticipation this particular day, I unzipped my duffel bag and grabbed my lunch box, only to find that someone had been there before me. Gone. Everything was gone. I was devastated, and cried. Mrs Thornberg was on playground patrol that day. She noticed me crying and asked what was wrong. I told her that my lunch had been stolen. She comforted me, assuring me that it must have just been a case of mistaken identity and that there were a lot of similar-looking black school bags. I wasn’t so sold. She took me to the office and provided me with a sandwich and a drink.

I reported what had happened to my mother upon arriving home. Mum reassured me that Mrs Thornberg was right, and someone had accidentally taken my lunch. The next day she packed my lunch and off to school I went.

10.15 am. The race was on again. And to my great disappointment, the previous day had repeated. Lunch, gone. Unsure of what to do, I did nothing. I was fairly hungry that day, to say the least.

After school, belly rumbling, I walked into our house and it smelt like a big warm hug. Mum was cooking my favourite. A double layer chocolate cake with choc-chips and her mouth-watering homemade cream centre. I raced into the kitchen, only to be scolded for running through the house, and to be told that the cake would be for lunch boxes only.

I explained to my mother that my lunch had disappeared again. Now she was getting annoyed. She asked if I had notified the teacher, of which I told her, ‘no’. She asked why. I told her that maybe, I should spy, and see who was doing this. That way they would be busted, get into trouble, and not do it anymore. My mother thought that this was a somewhat good idea, but wanted to know how I was planning on getting to the bag rack before the bell so as to catch them in the act? Good point. I said I could ask the teacher if I could go to the toilet five minutes before the bell would ring. Mum didn’t think that was very honest. She came up with a plan. Oh boy, she was a crafty one.

The next morning before school, Mum packed two lunch boxes for me. One with my normal lunch and one different. I was to give my normal lunch to my friend to mind in her bag. The other was to be left in my bag. It contained a sandwich, a banana, and a lovely big piece of chocolate cake. Laced with a nice big handful of chocolate flavoured laxatives. Mum's new treat. Chocolate Surprise!

Problem solved. My bag was never touched again. I didn’t find out who was stealing, but we still laugh about it to this day, knowing that they got their just deserts!

As a celebration, mum said that we could eat the rest of the cake for afternoon tea that day. Too late. Dad had beaten us to it. We were upset and mum was not happy, but secretly she was very impressed with herself that her cooking was so popular! (Although there is one person out there who would think her chocolate cake is pretty crappy!)