It’s about time for you to toss another smile over at the girl when you spot it. Next to a Betty Crocker pie pan and a framed tribute to John Wayne—a triptych that has been hand-painted by a local artist—it flashes up at you like the Holy Grail itself. Caught for a moment in the light from a nearby window—a trick or refraction and timing—and you literally have to shield your eyes for a moment to look at it. Now, your first instinct is to back away, to act like you haven’t even noticed it yet, in case the girl is still watching you. You steal a glance over at her and are relieved to see that she has returned to her battered copy of V. C. Andrews—one about some children in an attic somewhere who are being naughty. You circle back to the table quite casually, picking up a baseball mitt as you walk along. When you get close enough you lean down for a moment, just for a moment, to make sure that you haven’t been mistaken. Seen a mirage. You pick it up slowly, turning it over in your hands, marveling at the fact that it hasn’t rusted out at the hinges or lost any of its color. But no, a Six Million Dollar Man lunch box and not a dent in sight. Eager now, you snap open the lid to see if by some lucky chance the thermos might still be inside. It sparkles up at you like the Hope diamond, nestled firmly beneath the wire hooking mechanism that you remember so well. What a find. What manna from heaven. It’s the vintage 1974 version, too, not the ’78, which was much inferior, in your mind, to this little jewel. Your childhood floods back to you as you stand there, rushing down and over you like spring runoff high in the Rockies. School buses and recess and holidays and sidewalk lemonade stands swirl around in your head for a moment, causing you to nearly swoon. A thing like this, a simple piece of pressed metal and plastic, can transport a grown man like yourself back to your youth like something out of an H. G. Wells story. Amazing but true. You stand as living proof of the power of memory. Memory and memorabilia.