Don't Drink Bees

I was a normal kid growing up, so of course I loved sweets. This usually meant candy: jelly beans, hard candy, chocolate, coffee nips (gooey enough to rip dental fillings from your head), candy canes, gumdrops, black licorice - anything but caramel. (I always traded my caramel Halloween candy with my brother for the peanut ones he was allergic to.) Candy was great. And when there were no candies in the house, I would get creative.

I ate sprinkles that were meant for adorning cupcakes. (And I would always eat leftover cookie batter and cake frosting.) Sometimes I would eat spoonfuls of sugar right out of the bowl.

My mother told me doing that would cause worms to grow in my stomach. But she had played the worm card a few too many times, and I didn't believe her. Worms appeared when you did anything bad, like running around the yard barefoot - and of course eating sugar straight out of the bowl.

I suppose I could have masked my sweet tooth with cereal or a grapefruit. No one would have noticed the sugar then, dissolved in milk or juices. But I was honest. I ate my unadulterated sugar in the open without shame.

Chocolate was my favorite sweet, and when there were no Hershey bars or boxes of Russell Stovers lying around, I did what I had to do. I reached into the back of the kitchen cabinet for the unsweetened baking chocolate.

I know what you're thinking: that's not sweet, right? Well, it wasn't until I wetted an ounce or two and dipped it into my bowl of pure sugar. That was some good dark chocolate.

I loved the candy holidays: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter. I tried to ration out the pieces, so they would last longer. (My brother always seemed to have Halloween candy lying around as late as January.) But I couldn't will myself to do it. My candy always disappeared more quickly than I'd planned.

But my mother never let me be too gluttonous. My Easter basket or Halloween bag had to last at least a week or two. She made sure of it. She was a conscientious mother. She knew that I was capable of eating all the candy in one sitting if left to my own devices.

Unfortunately my father underestimated my sweet teeth - or perhaps he wanted to teach me an important lesson about gluttony once and for all - when he allowed me to bring my entire basket in the car Easter morning for our trip through New England.

Follow up:

For some reason, it was just my father and me making the round of family visits this particular year. Maybe my mother was distracted with an illness my brother had and that's why she missed me hefting my basket of goodies into the passenger's seat of the car. Maybe she thought Dad would stop me from my primal urges to ingest all things sugary.

He didn't.

At first it was the best trip ever. Traveling the open road with my dad on an adventure. Popping marshmallow chicks and jellybeans into my mouth mile after mile. Holding adult-like conversations with my father. Eating my chocolate bunny's ears, then tail, then feet. Viewing the windy rollercoaster-like backroads of New England from the front seat. Eating a few more jellybeans, followed by the middle of the chocolate rabbit. Searching for more chocolate eggs in my baskets. Yes, this was the life!

Or it was. Until I began to feel the curves of those rollercoaster-like New England roads in the pit of my saccharin soaked stomach. Swallowing a few chocolate eggs was not the same as taking an Alka-Seltzer. And by the time I’d realized I had eaten too much candy, it was too late.

Luckily, my father was used to me getting the normal, run-of-the-mill motion sickness during windy car trips, so he was prepared with a paper bag. Which I grabbed both gratefully and swiftly.

And then sadly, the marshmallow chicks, chocolate rabbits, and all of their collective eggs rushed from my belly, tearing at my esophagus in their haste. It was the worst trip ever.

I felt awful. My beloved candy was gone - and wasted in the bottom of a paper grocery sack. And did I mention I didn’t feel too well? I definitely wasn’t up to visiting relatives who would probably offer me more candy - candy I wouldn't be able to eat for a very long time, until the memory of the stampeding herd of chicks and rabbits left me.

Actually, it's never left me. Which is why I no longer eat entire baskets or bags or bowls of candy in one sitting anymore. Just looking at a leftover cup of frosting makes my stomach do flip-flops now.

That's not such a bad thing though. I learned a valuable lesson that Easter about gluttony. Maybe just in time to save me from the sugar worms that my mother warned me about.