Who can make a boy’s wildest dream come true? The Candy Man can!
And who can trash that dream? The Anti-Candy Ma’am can! Or so she thinks…
“My wife says I’m getting too fat…”
As a youngster, this was probably the first time I heard this phrase come out of the mouth of a grown-ass man. Of course, it wouldn’t be long before I wizened to the ways of the world, and realized that, actually, this was sort of a theme in many marriages.
The grown-ass man that first uttered those words to me was Matt, a military co-worker of my brother-in-law, Joe. The previous year we had lived with Joe and my sister on the local Navy base–right around the corner from Matt–and while I had moved back to Kansas to live with my old man for the school year, Mom had got her own apartment in the nearby town. Though I had come back for the summer, Mom had her day job, so most days I would try to convince somebody to sneak me onto base. Otherwise, I would have been stuck by myself in Mom’s apartment with nothing to do but play videogames, watch reruns of Mr. Belvedere and Dinosaurs, and eat the stupid health food with which Mom stocked her pantry.
Anyways, so there we were, the three of us dudes, plus my slightly older brother 1SkinnyJ, chillin’ in Matt’s garage (for a youngster like me, it was a real treat to get to hang out with ‘the big boys’).
“…so, lads, today’s your lucky day,” Matt continued. “Gentlemen and, well, uh, boys, behold: my candy stash!”
I looked at 1SkinnyJ, mouth agape, to see him giving me that same look. We could not believe our eyes. We had never seen so much candy in our lives outside of Mr. Bulky’s infamous sweets shop.
“Sadly for me–but great for you–the wife is making me get rid of every last bit of this sweet, sweet junk food,” Matt lamented. “Please. Take it all out of my sight before I change my mind.
“You’re just messing with us, right?” 1SJ asked Matt. “There’s no way any man with half a sweet tooth would let this go freely.”
While 1SJ probed the veracity of our apparent windfall, I eyeballed the stash up and down. Kit-Kat. Snickers. Pay Day. Twix–both caramel and the highly sought-after peanut butter version. And that was just a mere sampling of the American varieties. I mean, this dude had it all. Even several boxes of exotic Asian candies. I’m guessing they were mostly of Japanese origin, though I had yet to learn Kanji, so I couldn’t be 100% sure what the strange writing on the packaging said. However, I suspect they were from Japan mainly based on the fact that they were weird af, which just screamed ‘I’m Japanese!.’
“Nope, I sh*t thee not,” Matt confirmed the good news. “But I told the wife I was throwing it away, so you best skedaddle out of here with it all before she finds out what we’re up to. She’ll lose her mind if she finds out I’m contributing to the cavities of minors.”
“I have no place to keep this on base,” 1SJ turned to me with a solemn look on his face. “We’ll have to smuggle it into my room in Mom’s apartment. I’m entrusting you to protect it when I’m not around. Can I count on you, bro?”
“You got it, dude!” I said, despite not actually being a bona fide fan of the 80s sitcom, Full House.
I turned to Matt, placing my hand of my heart, “You can rest at ease: I promise you that we’ll provide a safe and loving home for your candy. Don’t you worry, it’ll be thoroughly enjoyed.”
“In your chubby little hands, I have no doubt it will be,” he replied. “Just don’t let your mom find it, or else…well, ya know…”
“Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity-dog!” I sang to myself as I woke up mid-morning the next day.
Mom had already long headed off to work and I finally had the apartment to myself. What kid wouldn’t be incredibly enthusiastic to greet the day, knowing what sugary delights that lied in wait for him? Especially an adipose-advantaged adolescent1I.e., “fat kid”. like me?
Knowing I would need my energy if I intended to spend my day indulging in all sorts of confectionery delights, I amazingly had the patience and discipline to start off with something that actually had some nutritional value: a big ol’ bowl of soggy Grape Nuts. I dutifully chowed down, one mushy mouthful at a time, all whilst fantasizing about which treats I wanted to eat first (there is something to be said for letting some anticipation build up, know what I mean?).
At long last, it was time to engage in some pure, unadulterated hedonism. I couldn’t help myself from skipping across the apartment and back to 1SJ‘s bedroom, where I carefully peeled back the layers of bean bags that I had employed to abscond our precious cache to reveal…absolutely nothing.
How could this possibly be??? I shook my fists to the heavens, fell on my knees, and rent in half the Nirvana smiley-face t-shirt I had been wearing.
My heart caught in my throat, while simultaneously the pit in my stomach dropped like a brick, as the realization overwhelmed me: Mom had found us out.
And not only had she found us out, but she had completely wiped us out. Not a wrapper, nor a crumb, nor any trace of the glorious treasure that had sat hidden in our room only mere hours earlier.
“How could I have been so sloppy, so stupid?” I chided myself. “I knew I should have hidden it so much better! Dammmmmmit.”
And just like that, all my hopes and dreams for what should have been the most glorious summer ever, down the drain…
“Down the drain…down the drain…down the drain…” I kept muttering to myself.
I pounded the video game controller in frustration as I processed the cold hard fact that I had blown the opportunity of a lifetime. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting over the heartbreak quickly.
“Down the drain…down the drain…down the–wait just a tic!” I was starting to realize something.
“W.W.M.D.–What Would Mom Do?” I pondered.
“If it had been 1SJ’s weed stash she had found, sure, I could see her flushing it down the toilet. But…but…but, there’s no way in hell that’s what she did with all that candy. What did she do with it?”
I mean, something like that doesn’t just vanish into thin air, right?
“Hmmm…I wonder…no, surely she would have been more careful–surely!”
I about completely put the thought out of my mind. Almost.
“Oh, what the heck do I have to lose at this point?” I continued my monologue with myself. “Buckle up, Buttercup, it looks we’re going dumpster diving…”
Not that I thought that anything would really come of it–as evidenced by my lack of footwear–I nonetheless wandered casually out to the nearest dumpster, which happened to be right next to where Mom tended to park her Pickle Wagon.
Needless to say, I was completely unprepared to find sitting completely unblemished and easily within arms reach, there on top of the rest of the rubbish, basking in an angelic beam of light shining on it from upon high…every last piece of candy that had been prematurely ripped from their loving candy-daddy’s arms.
I sh*t thee not, I swear I heard this playing in that moment:
As much as I had been in shock when I discovered my goodies had gone missing, I was twice as much so when the Good Lord smiled upon me and gave me a totally undeserved second chance at achieving diabetic Nirvana. There really is no greater feeling in the world than that of a dead dream being brought back to life with a vengeance like ol’ Lazarus…aaaaahhhhhh!
Eventually, though, I gathered my wits and collected the goods before Mom could come home for her lunch break and spoil the party permanently. You better believe I hid My Precious much better this time–so good in fact, that I can’t find the slightest of slivers in my memory where I had squirreled it all away for the rest of the summer.
The interesting part is that Mom never said a word to me about what she had discovered amongst those bean bags, presuming that such a gut-wrenching loss would be punishment enough.
Oh, ho ho ho! Little did she know that Child Protective Services would have come and taken me away had they known all the abuse my teeth suffered that one glorious, glorious summer…
Content created on: 31 January/2/3 February 2024 (Weds/Fri/Sat)
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