The Great Lunchbox Mystery

When I was in elementary school, for a few years I had a bit of a reputation as a mystery solver. Whenever something strange or mysterious happened on school grounds, I'd announce that I would "get to the bottom of this mystery", and that my fellow students were welcome to assist me in looking for clues. They frequently did - kids love a good mystery.

One morning, in elementary school, for some reason or another I opened the classroom's fire escape door (I believe I was placing something out there as part of a chore, but I no longer recall for sure) and was greeted with a strange sight. Before me on the concrete walk surrounding the school lay a shard of brightly colored plastic. Immediately switching to my detective persona, I announced my find and asked both the teacher and my classmates what they thought it could be. Nobody had any idea. Without leads, the case seemed closed, but a week later I got my first clue.

It was during recess in late fall. More plastic shards were discovered, these of a different color. This time there were enough to match up a few and determine what the shattered object had been. The answer was that these shards belonged to a plastic lunchbox, of a type many children had (including myself). These lunchboxes never struck me as being particularly fragile, and with this new clue the mystery had only deepened. We'd answered the "what". Now came the "who" and "why". Frustratingly, neither myself nor my friends could fathom an answer, and the mysterious box-smasher was continually claiming more victims – for months I would find familiar shards on the ground. My classmates, knowing I was trying to solve the case, frequently brought me more shards to puzzle over. The low point of the case was in midwinter, when I foolishly left my Goosebumps-themed lunchbox unattended outside, and it too fell to the box-smasher's scythe. Having my own lunchbox be claimed by the box-smasher just made me more determined. Now it was personal.

While I had a good overall record with my "mysteries", this one went unsolved, even though it was the biggest and longest-researched case I'd ever undertaken. Most of my other mysteries were simple, harmless affairs, but the box-smasher was destroying other people's property, and I would have loved so much to see my sleuthing bring them to justice. Sadly, it never happened. All I could conclude, after months of investigation during recess, was that the box-smasher was probably an older child from fifth or sixth grade. They always smashed the boxes outdoors and, while maybe scattering pieces, were very sloppy about leaving evidence behind, probably to traumatize the owner. The lunchbox thermos was never damaged, but it was sometimes missing or stolen. In late winter or early spring, the attacks ceased, and never resumed. It’s been over ten years since then, and this is one cold case that’s never going to be solved.