What This Dad Packed In His Daughter’s Last High School Lunch Went Viral

Youngest children sometimes get a little extra coddling from their parents, but at a certain point, even they have to be metaphorically pushed out of the nest. When that happens it can be very emotional for everyone involved, the kid, the parents, and the thousands of people who are reading about it on Twitter. Or at least that’s how it happened for Meg Sullivan, a high school senior from Tacoma, Washington. Last week, on Meg’s last day of high school, she posted two photos to Twitter that showed the sweet thing her dad put in her last packed lunch, and we’ve been weeping over our keyboards ever since we saw it.

Meg’s dad Tom packed her lunch every single day since she was in Kindergarten. Perhaps because Meg is the baby of the family, Tom has always gone well beyond the call of duty with what he packed. Meg told BuzzFeed News that her dad has always included pre-peeled oranges in her lunch. This over-the-top item actually became a family joke once Meg was well into her teens and more than capable of peeling her own oranges, but Tom continued including them in her lunch everyday. That is until her last day of high school.

On her last day, Meg tweeted, "My dad has been peeling oranges for my lunch since kindergarten & on my last day of high school I got this instead." The two photos included with the tweet showed a ziplock bag with two unpeeled oranges and printed wikiHow instructions on how to peel an orange. On the instructions, Meg's dad wrote, "It's time baby girl," and drew a crying face, which was a pretty accurate rendering of what we looked like when we read this tweet.

We aren't the only once who were emotional over the photos. The tweet has been liked almost 500,000 times and has been retweeted by over 100,000 Twitter users. And, just in case you were worried, Meg did indeed figure out how to get peel her own orange. Looks like she's finally all grown up and ready to leave the nest.