Scott writes:

"Lunchboxes I used as a kid were made from metal, pinched like the devil's tweezers if you caught that flap of skin between your thumb and hand in the hinge, and always had a leaky drink container. I know this because I would always test mine against the large muddy hillslide I passed on my way to school. Instead of passing the hillslide, I'd go down it, especially if it were raining, which was rare in Anchorage — usually it just snowed. Anyway, the box would be ejected from the top on the way down, eliminating my need to carry it down on my own. Basically, I tried to turn the slide into a bowling alley, and the bowling ball was my lunch box. That way, the characters imprinted on the lunchbox could really be action heros.

"Of course, I wasn't actually trying to knock down pins, so maybe that's where the simile falls apart. Can't really remember what childhood idols were represented. I wasn't really into it at that point. Space: 1999 strikes me as being vaguely relevant, but I don't know. I guess it's possible I made all of this up for my own amusement. Either that, or, there really *was* an action hero named Thermos."