Harold Crumpmeyer

Harold Crumpmeyer.

All your life, you had always had a sneaking suspicion that it was Harold Crumpeyer.  The boy who stole your shiny purple pencil in the third grade.  You loved that pencil.  You won it with the ten tickets you got playing skee-ball at the Annistown Elementary Night at Chuck E. Cheese.   You used it everyday, but for only an hour each day.  You were afraid to sharpen it lest it be eaten away by the ferocious, mechanical pencil sharpener until there was nothing left but a dull nub and a few shavings of shiny, purple flakes.

 You can still remember the day you came into your classroom and discovered that your shiny, purple pencil was missing from its designated overnight resting place in your flip-top desk.  While your heart raced you scanned the classroom…to Jenny Obermeyer, third grade hopscotch champion….to Adam McDanielson, class nose-picker-and-flicker…to Dewayne Troncalli, collector of mint condition Matchbox cars.  But alas, there was no sign of the pencil.  Defeated and conquered, you resigned yourself to multiplication tables with (gasp) a plain, old yellow #2.

As you joined the line for gym class that afternoon a tiny flash caught your eye.  As the sun shone through the classroom window you could have sworn you caught a metallic purple glimmer flashing from the back pocket of Harold Crumpmeyer’s corduroy pants.  But in one-tenth of an instant, the flicker was gone.

Years later, your suspicions were confirmed.  Years of thorough investigation led to the discovery that Harold Crumpmeyer was more than just the teacher’s pet.  He was also the sole mastermind behind the Pencil Theft Mysteries and the ringleader of the infamous Bad Lunch Trades…when he and his conspirators would somehow end up with the Kit-Kats and Little Debbie Snack Cakes while you and your friends would blankly stare at your newly acquired steamed broccoli and Jell-o molds leftover from Thanksgiving.

Harold Crumpmeyer was a bad boy.