(Thunderous boos)
I'm sitting at the dining table at this very moment trying to talk myself out of going back into the kitchen. I bought my daughter a box of Nilla Wafers last week. As of right now there are about ten left in the box and she hasn't had a single one.
[Update]It's been three minutes since I typed that last sentence. There is now an empty Nilla Wafers box in the trashcan underneath some paper towels so that my daughter doesn't see it when she wakes up tomorrow. "I'd like to thank the Devil for helping me achieve this award..."
I forgot that I liked Nilla Wafers. Before this week, I hadn't had any since I was about seven. The year was 1989. I went over my aunt's house and she gave me some. I liked them. The next day in the grocery store I asked my grandmother for some and when she saw how much they cost, she said no. Later that day we stopped by the liquor store to play a number and they had the ghetto convenience store version..."Wafers!" They had the traditional diabetes motivation sticker on the package like every other liquor store/convenience store snack back in the day: 2/$1.00! I bought two packs and almost broke my damned jaw trying to chew those rock hard, stale, tasteless knock offs. But of course that didn't stop me from eating both packs.
That memory came rushing back as I took a bite of one of the cookies. I braced myself for my teeth to hurt and was surprised that it was actually buttery. I've been missing out. I wonder how different my life would have been if I'd been one of the kids who didn't shop exclusively in the liquor store. I had a semi-well-to-do girlfriend in high school who had never tried Kool-Aid before. I snuck her some like it was crack and she tried it, liked it, and immediately poured the rest down the drain and made me take the empty packet back home with me for fear of her mom...stabbing her? I don't know what the fear was, but they weren't allowed to drink Kool-Aid or sodas.
I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have had as many sugar headaches, neon urine and general overall confusion growing up, but that was the FUN stuff! The best summer memories are from those days when my mother just wanted me to get out of her face and go outside so she'd give me $3 to go to the store. That was like a winning Powerball ticket to a 7 year old. I'd run my chunky behind all the way to the store and buy the same thing:
- 25 cent pack of Cheetos Paws
- 25 cent pack of Sour Cream & Onion Utz
- 25 cent pack of Lemon Heads
- 10 cent AirHeads (X 2)
- 25 cent "Red" Little Hug
- 50 cent "red" Giant Freeze Pop (Couldn't get blue because everyone thought they caused cancer)
- 25 cent pack of the red, white and blue Now and Laters (mambas if they didn't have any now and latas)
- 50 cent pack of those hard ass oatmeal cookies that came in a roll (or the "ring" cookies with the hole in the middle, or a Susie Q, or a High Five, or a Moonpie, or the cupcakes with the little swirl icing)
- 25 cent worth of candy for the "greedies" (friends who bummed candy): chic-o-sticks, mary janes, blowpops, sugar straws, etc
- And then I'd run back home with a paper bag full of childhood obesity.
The crazy thing is that all of us were eating that crap. With that much sugar in our systems, playing tag was the shit! It was like a bunch of mini-crackheads chasing one another. We were jumping down stairwells and doing backflips down hills. Long before parkour became a thing, there was always a kid in the neighborhood who could scale a fence or a side of a building like it was nothing. Nine times out of ten his story probably ended with him being shot by the police.
Nobody ever got caught playing tag with that much sugar flowing through our veins, so we came up with team tag, freeze tag, rock tag (throw a rock at somebody and they're "it"). We made up stupid games like "high-low." That's where two people stretched out a rope and everybody tried to jump over it and then they'd keep raising it. Then there were just dumb "cokehead" games like "How many steps can you jump down?"
It was fun! Until the sugar wore off. Then you were dehydrated as hell, your head and stomach started to hurt, and you just wanted to lie down...but you weren't going to. You kept playing until someone made you come in the house. Then you went in the house, complained that you were thirsty, turned your nose up at water because "it tastes funny" and probably drank some Kool-Aid (Flavor-Aid if you were THAT poor) before watching TV until you fell asleep.
Fun times.
Today's blog post brought to you by Insulin!
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