A life lesson for my son

I have tried to mentally catalog some experiences so I could pass my hard-earned wisdom along to young Samson as he grows. Number one in a completely irregular series:

Somebody at the office ate my bag of cherries the other day. Right out of the refrigerator that we all share. The office mini-fridge, that sacred space that should be a repository of community and good will (and really old butter pats and a gigantic thermal lunchbox that someone insists on cramming into the fridge despite the fact that it's thermal for crying out loud).

In any event, I rarely remember to eat the fruits and vegetables I bring to work. Every once in a while, I'll spot a lonely ziploc full of graying mini carrots sitting way in the back. But I was ready to eat those cherries. And on the same day in which I had brought them from home. Clearly, I couldn't go around smelling my colleagues' breath or checking their trash cans for pits. And I wasn't going to send some kind of broadcast e-mail about my healthy snack gone missing. But I did wonder about what kind of person eats someone else's cherries. And what would stop them from eating the sine qua non of lunch, my turkey sandwich?

What to do? Label my lunch.

Not with my name, of course. I mean, if you ate my cherries, you'll probably go for my tuna or little serving of jello pudding as well. At home, I had a flash of inspiration and wrote in black marker on a post-it attached to the aluminum foil on my sandwich: Property of N. Mandela.

I mean, if you would take Nelson Mandela's lunch, there's just no hope for you. Seriously.