The Lunch Box - Part Two

“Ralph come look at this,” Char said from a different room. “What is it?” I snapped back. I wasn’t in one of my better moods.

“Just come here a minute” Char replied.

I sat the box down and headed to where she was. As soon as I saw her, I snapped out, “What?”

Smiling she said, “This was your Grandpa’s lunch box.” I stared at it for a minute trying to act nonchalant. Then I saw the bottom of the lunch box and immediately knew it was ‘the one’. Many times, I had shuffled and rummaged through sandwich wrappers, banana peels and apple cores looking for the bottom of that lunch box and the surprise it held. I knew the bottom of that lunch box on sight. I wrote about the lunch box before, the story is located here.

“I’m taking this,” I said to my brother and sister. They looked at me as if I were nuts. One of them showed me where the others were. There were three black metal lunch boxes all belonging to my Grandpa. I took all three but I knew ‘the one’.

Back home, I went to the garage to clean the lunch boxes. I saved ‘the one’ until last. I knew the lunch box was empty - I had already looked inside. Yet, there I sat, a man in his fifties, holding the lunch box of a man who had passed away thirty-nine years ago, wondering what I would find inside.


I slowly opened the lunch box and reached inside. I found the surprise – memories.