The Missing Lunch Bag

 What drove the boy to do this? By looking at the photo, you know exactly the name of the boy who owns this lunch bag.

I remember when I was in elementary school,  my dad used to write our names on our pencils (after he sharpened them)  and school bags, notebooks, erasers, crayon boxes, etc. As a mother, I inherited my father’s habit of writing my children’s names on their stuff (and that includes the inside lining of their jackets). 

A few weeks ago, too eager to go with his classmates and play at the playground, my son left his lunch bag in the school cafeteria. When it did not turn up at the LOST & FOUND box, I notified the teacher and he sent an email to everyone in school that might have found the missing lunch bag. You know at this time of the year, it wasn’t so easy to find lunch bags that are available in stores. But luckily we found one at Target (this is not a plug-in, Target always carries school items even in the middle of the school year) and my son loves the design. Being a fourth grader, he prefers simple ones than those with kiddy designs, if you know what I mean. 

For almost one month, we never heard of the missing lunch box. Then, this morning… as we walked past the LOST & FOUND box, my son picked up something. It was his old lunch box! And the sandwich box was still there. While driving back home, I was shaking my head, I just can’t believe it that the poor boy stole somebody’s lunch bag and tried to scribble a red marker pen in an attempt to erase the owner’s name and write his name on the flap. There are possible reasons that made him put it on the LOST & FOUND box. Well, the parents obviously did not care for their son to continue using a a stolen bag because he’d used it for almost a month. Maybe a teacher,  a classmate, or even a cafeteria worker saw it and told him to return it. My husband thinks that maybe the boy forgot to put it away and thus, the bag found its way to the LOST & FOUND box. What ever it is, I think it’s a shame that the parents of the boy did not educate their son.  The boy probably did not realize that it is rather obvious that the bag belongs to somebody. You might be asking yourself, why am I making a big deal out of this. I just felt sorry for the situation that small things like this actually means big. For my son, he has learned the consequences of what happens if he lost his bag. He has to use his old Blues Clues lunch bag  for 3 days, until we got him the new one. And the boy who took it, somebody has to point out to him that the bag is not his. How about his parents? They might not have learned anything, they did not care at all. Or maybe I’m wrong.

What happened to the lunch bag? I tossed it in the washer and set it aside. It’s a good reminder for my son not to forget his stuff next time.