Friday Lunch Blog
Dig in every month as our Lunch Ticket staff brings you thought-provoking personal essays and nonfiction stories in our Friday Lunch Blog. From stories about grief and loss, to tales of growing up and overcoming challenges, to celebratory pieces about love and family, these stories are shared every second Friday of the month. With these blogs, we aim to give you a glimpse into Lunch Ticket and the values we stand by for this literary publication, to empower writers and readers with the knowledge and skills to lead meaningful lives and to advance social, economic, and environmental justice. We hope you enjoy!

The Enduring Haunting of a Failed Driver’s Test(s)
Meghan McGuire
The greatest shame of my young life was the first time I failed my driver’s test. I had never failed…

Glitch Wisdom
KJ McCoy
Being misgendered at random hasn’t always been a magical experience. Years, community, and devotion to self-discovery and personal development have…

Lessons on Getting Paid: My First Year as a Freelance Writer
EJ Saunders
The first time I was paid for my writing, I pinned the pay stub to my corkboard. This March marked…

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe
Meghan McGuire
I have killed my cat a hundred times. In my head. Please don’t call PETA. Let me be clear. I…

The Night I Want to Remember
Sanaz Tamjidi
I don’t remember that night. The sky could have been filled with stars, creating constellations that those before us spent…

From Paper to the Page
Annie Bartos
I wanted my brain to remember what it was like to begin a new piece of writing from scratch. From…

Confessions of a Birthday Person
Meghan McGuire
I’m a birthday person, and I am so sorry about it. Yes, I know. I know. I declare November my…

A Lesson in Magic from the Maine Coast
Meghan McGuire
If you sing to periwinkles, it coaxes them out of their shell. I don’t know if this is actually true.…

Am I a Writer?
Sanaz Tamjidi
I envy people who can go to sleep by midnight. Who can get under their warm covers and feel their…

What Happened
Amanda Woodard
[Content warning: sexual assault] How strange to be an adult this time around, to have the vocabulary to describe what…

Where Are You From?
Majella Pinto
Like the salmon, who start their home in freshwater and migrate to the ocean then return home to spawn and…

The Old Folks’ Home
Karen Gaul Schulman
No matter how smart or self-sufficient you are, the day may come when someone else takes care of you. Someone…

Peace, Love, and a lot of Loud Rock & Roll
Sunee Lyn Foley
Born in May 1967, pre- “Summer of Love,” I am the child of quintessential hippies. My mother taught me everything…

Crosses to Pentacles
Jazmine Cooper
No one wakes up one day and says, “I want to be a witch.” Except for me. I had been…

Table to Trash
Franz Franta
Like a Tibetan sand painting, I created hundreds of bite-sized works of art that lasted as long as a server…

Where/When
Gillian Shure
November 2020. I’m forty-one and my daughter is thirteen months. When breastfeeding, I feel my breasts to see which has…

Diagnosed at Sixty – My ADHD Journey
Kait Leonard
My doctor wore the expression of someone with a problem to solve. And he was looking at me. I froze,…

Why Video Game Preservation Matters
Nicholas Galvez
It's easier now than ever to play and get into video games, but as we become more comfortable with digitization,…

Sarees in America
Majella Pinto
“No one wears sarees in America,” my husband who was on an H1 visa in the United States said when…

Millennial Binge
Sunee Lyn Foley
My daughter, Rebecca—from mannerisms and facial expressions, to likes and dislikes—is a mini me, except for the fact that she…

Degrees of Communication
Amanda Woodard
For the first time in six years, I invited my mom to sleep under the same roof with me. I…

A Woman’s Place
Gillian Shure
Not having child care sucks. I had child care. I had a miraculous saint of a woman who knew baby…

FOMO’s Big Sibling ⸺ Senior FOMO
Kait Leonard
Team tryouts this week. If you want to perform at Camp Hollywood, show up at the studio on Monday. This…

A Little “Triggering” Life
Jazmine Cooper
Earlier this year, I read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. If you haven’t read this book yet, be advised,…

An L.A. Story
Franz Franta
The other day, I watched L.A. Story (1991) with Steve Martin for the first time since I was a child.…

The Epiphany
Regan Humphrey
Between June and July, you lost twenty pounds. And maybe he died because of it. Wait. Was it fifteen pounds?…

The Happy Heretic
Karen Gaul Schulman
With fanatical determination, I memorized the required lines to affirm I took Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, all…

A Love Letter to the Sentence
A.D. Russ
I hit a writing wall. I could construct a narrative and cast characters, but I didn't enjoy the sentences I…

The Feeling
Jazmine Cooper
The first time my classically trained ears hear “Forty Six & 2” by the legendary metal band Tool, I was…

A Little Voice That Never Quits
Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
I’m crying in the principal’s office, but I’m an adult. I’ve just quit my job at the school where I started…

Writing in Conversation
Shannon C.F. Rogers
Hearing someone else’s perspective inspired me. That’s what I’d forgotten. It was 2016. I’d lived in New York City for…

Ecstasy Like Fire
Amanda Woodard
My old creative writing teacher leans his squat body against his desk, his girthy thighs splayed across the seat of…

This Isn’t Normal: Climate Change from a Reporter’s Perspective
Loumarie I Rodriguez
Thick clouds took over the sky as I raced down windy roads, trying to beat the impending storm. Against the…

The Opposite of Silver Linings: The Big Comeback
Karen Gaul Schulman
This year-long hunker-down reset my rhythms to a slower, less eventful pace. The pandemic gave me an excuse to do…

Compelling Characters – In life and In Stories
Gail Vannelli
What do a Pentecostal minister, a hobbling chicken, and a German immigrant have in common? Me! The minister was my…

The Best Kind of Magic
Bob Kirwin
Books have been some of the best friends I’ve ever had. They’ve kept me company when I was lonely, taken…

A Man Who Literally Goes to Therapy
Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
A meme started going around this year that hit close to home. It goes like this: “Men will literally ___…

What Will Become of the Millennial Wild Woman?
Franz Franta
I feel I haven’t even made it to adulthood, let alone nearing menopause. My outer woman struggles to have a…

Becoming a Wordplay M.A.S.T.E.R. (Maker of All Sorts of Tomfoolery to Entertain Readers)
Gail Vannelli
Like any young teenager, I was passionate about the things I loved and the things I hated. What I loved…

Being Biracial: The Identity Crisis of Both and Neither
Julz Savard Hall
I have never felt like I belonged to a group of people. As a kid, I spent half my time…

And God Said: “Come as You Are”
Bob Kirwin
What I came to see was that all my prayers are answered. Every time. I don’t always hear it, and…

Hood Century: Using Architecture and Psychogeography for Community Preservation
Franz Franta
Last week I was scrolling through Instagram and saw an image of a boxy apartment building on the corner of…

Never Enough: The Life and Trials of a Perfectionist
Ashley Russ
What I experience goes beyond merely seeking excellence and having high standards. I compare myself to others and become easily…

Pregnancy 101: The Woes, the Rules, and Yes, the Swollen Ankles
Julz Savard Hall
Two blue lines. “Are you sure?” I asked my husband, Tom. One line on the white, plastic stick looked kind…

The Baby Step
Barbara Platts
When I have children, I don’t want to let them down. I also don’t want to let myself down. I’ve…

Divorce and Happy Endings, or “The Great Mulligan”
Karen Gaul Schulman
As someone with decades of professional divorce-related experience, a child of a “broken home,” and a thrice divorced person myself,…

It’s Time to Schedule Your Dental Exam
Amanda Woodard
I’m sitting in a stiff blue chair, reclined as if I should be relaxing. I’m scrolling through my phone to…

Close Listening: Paying a Different Attention to Music
Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
My mom gave me my first record player when I was in college. I had been eyeing it for some…

Drowning in Numbers: How I Almost Drowned in the Ocean and Why America Continues to Drown in Covid-19 Cases
Ashley Russ
I hadn’t made it far when I heard a train-sized roar coming from the ocean behind me. I hung from…

Words Can Carry Weight
Loumarie I Rodriguez
Do you remember when I called you late one night? I needed someone to confide in and you offered to…

Is It Time to Panic About the Climate Yet?
Amy Mills Klipstine
I admit I’m a worrywart. That’s what my mom always said, “We’re a family of worrywarts.” In reality, we’re a…

Bubbie’s Blog – Stardate 2020: Love, Fear and Zombies – Grandmothering in the Time of Corona
Karen Gaul Schulman
When I was a little girl, I climbed into my mother’s bed in the early mornings and snuggled up against…

Taking a Look at the Carnivore in the Mirror
Barbara Platts
I could feel the rubbery, nimble necks of the dead pheasants underneath my fingertips as I carried them to the…

Being There: Education in an Emergency
Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
In my first year of teaching, an entire family came to meet me…