TIFU by leaving a cheeseball unattended

In the 1990s, I lived in a 2-story apartment building which was built in the 1950s. The apartment was located in a small city, not too far from city center, but tucked away at the top of a hill, in a quiet neighborhood full of shady trees. I loved to hear the wind through the trees.

The apartment building was constructed much like some motels are: an open L-shape, with an outdoor walkway running in front of the units. It wasn't secure -- you could just walk up a flight of stairs in the bend of the "L" to get upstairs.

The second floor, where I lived, was 4 or 5 units, mostly occupied by quiet people whom I rarely saw. Mine was a 2-bedroom unit next to the stairs on the long side. The front door and living room windows of each unit were adjacent to the walkway.

I got married in the summer, the month after my birthday. The time in between was busy, as I planned the wedding and worked. Occasionally, UPS delivered wedding-related packages.

For some reason, my parents gave me a big cheeseball (among other things) for my birthday. It was sharp cheddar, covered in sliced almonds, and about 3 inches or so in diameter.

The cheeseball sat in the refrigerator until a couple of weeks later, when I thought a portion of it would make a nice little mid-afternoon snack. I placed it on a small plate along with a few crackers and a butter knife and brought it all out to the coffee table in the living room.

But, the fridge was ancient -- and often a little too cold. Upon sitting down, I was disappointed to find that the the cheeseball was much too cold and hard to spread on crackers.

So I left it there on the coffee table and went out to run some errands, thinking that it would be perfectly, spreadably soft by the time I returned.

I was gone for about an hour. When I returned, I saw that UPS had left a package on the walkway outside my door. I picked it up and went to unlock the door -- but it was already unlocked and very slightly ajar!

That freaked me out a little. Since I lived alone, I was especially careful to keep the place locked up, whether I was home or not. Nobody else even had a key. But maybe I just hadn't locked the door on my way out. Hmmm. Okay.

But upon entering, there was a bigger mystery.

The cheeseball was gone.

The plate was still on the coffee table, along with the crackers and knife. But the cheeseball had vanished.

I searched the apartment. Nothing else was missing. Just the cheeseball.

It wasn't in the living room, the kitchen, or any other room. It wasn't back in the fridge, in the cabinets or in the trash. It wasn't anywhere.

The cheeseball was gone.

The only person I knew had been around during that hour was the UPS delivery driver. Flummoxed, I called the local UPS delivery hub, to see if the driver could tell me if he'd seen anyone at, or around, my place when he was there. When they contacted him later that afternoon, he insisted he'd seen no one.

What happened to the big cheddar cheeseball?

Did UPS guy steal the cheeseball for lunch, then lie about it? Did a neighbor or visitor make off with it? Did a small animal run away with it? Or...?

It never turned up, and its disappearance remains a mystery.

My family has never let me live this incident down. For many years now, they have been teasing me about the missing cheeseball. My parents have even accused me of eating the entire cheeseball! (That definitely didn't happen.) It sometimes comes up as a topic of conversation, and last Christmas they even sent me 3 cheeseballs as a joke.

My husband and I just laugh about it. It's one of the weirder things that's happened to me over the years.

But every now and then I ponder the cheeseball's fate. I hope whoever ate it enjoyed it -- and I wonder if they ever tell the story about that time they stole a cheeseball.

TL;DR I left a cheeseball unattended in my apartment, left to run some errands, and when I returned the door was open. Despite the break-in, my valuables were untouched. The cheeseball alone had been purloined from my apartment! To this day, its fate remains a mystery.