Under the cardboard flap lay an aluminum lunchbox. Its once colorful Glory Man images had been covered in a few layers of dust. But why the dust could reach its surface and not the sun, it didn’t know. Day after day, light flooded the little attic and drifted away. Night after night, crickets could be heard making trills and chirps. All the while, the lunchbox remained forgotten. Languishing in the rotted ashes of bread crumbs and growing clouds among the smudged mustard, the lunchbox remained helpless.
One of these boring days, the attic door opened for the first time in years. The lunchbox couldn’t see it, but the creaking was unmistakable. The lunchbox wanted so badly to see who had come up here and what they were doing. But alas, for several hours, indeed, for several days, people would come into the attic and move things around, then leave again.
After a week, a pair of white-gloved hands pulled back the cardboard box flap, allowing the sun to warm the lunchbox’s dirty surface.
The glorious moment did not last long. The white-gloved hands stuffed the lunchbox into a crate, which they moved to the back of a truck, bouncing down the road. The sensations felt familiar to the little lunchbox. It remembered the days it was young, smooth, bright, and being transported from the factory to the stores.
Back then, the promise of distant lands and exotic foods had sparked life into the aluminum box. On a shelf with a dozen other lunchboxes, the aspiring traveler passionately expressed all its hopes and dreams for the future. The identical drones around it only laughed it to scorn. That is, until a little boy pulled it off the shelf, leaving the others behind. It had the last laugh then.
The lunchbox met with a long string of disappointments from there. When school started, there were no distant lands or exotic foods to experience. Instead, every day contained the same bus, building, and sandwich. The same three things every. single. day. As the boy grew, the box got passed down to his sister, then their cousin, to a friend, a boy down the street, the girl next door, and finally, to an old man looking for collectibles. All its previous owners had gone to the same
school and eaten the same food. It was conventional chaos!
Now, the old lunchbox sat in the back of the bouncing, rumbling truck. Was it fated to return to the same store? The same school? That couldn’t happen. The lunchbox wouldn’t let that happen!
The truck hit a bump, knocking the crate lid loose. This was its chance! At the next bump, the lunchbox used everything it had and launched itself out of the crate. Another bump opened the truck door, and the lunchbox slid through and onto the street.
It skid across the hot, rocky gravel, making new dents and scuffs in its already battered surface. The fast pace of the traffic exhilarated the lunchbox. A tire nearly crushed it, pushing it into the path of a bike, which crashed into the lunchbox, flipping it. Someone kicked the box against the sidewalk, and a bird pecked at one of Glory Man’s heroic eyes. Another kick flipped it again, flinging it toward a gutter.
Teetering on the edge of a black abyss, the lunchbox strained and rocked, trying to return to the street. The underworld was not an appealing adventure destination. The lunchbox much preferred the cars.
A despondent feeling of betrayal overwhelmed the box as another tire bumped its handle, sending the lunchbox careening into the darkness.
Every forgotten detail of its life zapped through it. That time the tornado siren went off, or when Jenny and Bob kissed outside its locker. Perhaps the lunchbox had been too ambitious. Maybe it should’ve enjoyed those little moments more. What would’ve really happened had it stayed on that truck? It didn’t matter now. Not anymore. Life was over, and it was all the lunchbox’s fault.
A pull on its handle invigorated the box with new hope, and the darkness slowly grew farther away. The little hands that had rescued the lunchbox turned it over. A young boy with tight red curls and missing teeth smiled at the fading superhero on the front.
“Wow! I’ve alwayth wanthed a methal luthbockth,” said the little human.
He trotted home, holding the lunchbox’s handle. The box happily bounced with the boy’s skips, content that more boring days lie ahead.
Beth Freemont 