What is it about a thermos?

My entire life I have loved a thermos. I don't know why and I have no logical explanation for my affinity but as I often say, it is what it is. I bet I'm not alone.

This morning in an effort to eradicate a recent invasion of fruit flies or D.melanogaster for those of you looking for the specific genus, my lovely wife was going thoroughly through the pantry with her patented hot liquid Lysol to clear the little fly freaks. It has been quite an ordeal, but that is blog of a different color and one for another time.

Anyway as the shelves were cleared and as I entered the kitchen I spotted it. There majestically perched on the back of one of the pantry shelves, now unhidden by the blue lake green beans, was my thermos. It was given to me by a close friend a year or so ago for leading him across the treacherous waters of the San Francisco Bay in a kayak as he swam from Alcatraz to San Fran. It was filled with some an incredible hot chocolate mix and the taste was worth remembering but that isn't what was so endearing about it. It was the thermos. My very own cool silver bullet thermos. I could put anything I wanted in that baby from now on. It was sleek and heavy duty and frankly I looked important just packing it around.

Now before you confirm your thoughts of the past that I am totally crackers, think again and remember when you were just a pup. Back then they had some pretty cool lunch boxes, complete with a themed thermos to pack your PB&J, Cheeto's and apple in to elementary school. My first thermos was a Peanuts version. It had Snoopy and Chuck on it and it had a cool blue lid. Yeah the whole lunch box was nifty but the thermos was the keeper. I was always happy to bust that bad boy out and plop it down on the wall mounted fold out lunch table at Forbes Elementary. It was almost like pouring your koolaid or Tang or whatever you got out of the house with into that self contained screw off cap made you an instant "wheel" and the envy of all the kids who were eating school lunch or had to brown bag it.

If your like me you try and hold on to those little moments of glory. They serve as great memories to build self esteem.

For being such a big deal back then, I don't see a lot of combo lunch boxes anymore with the specialized thermos. I am sure they are out there somewhere, probably being packed to 1st grade by some lucky little toe headed kid. He no doubt is counting the minutes until Sponge Bob makes his lunch room appearance and all the kids think to themselves, I gotta have one of those thermos's.