getting squeezed below the border

When I was a lad, my father nicknamed me “The Grape.”


My disposition made me a sucker for every hard luck story and con man who came down Snake Oil Alley.


I suppose I still am.  Strike that.  I am.  No suppose about it.


And I can do it to myself.  As I did this past week.


Any of you who have been reading this blog for any time will know that I have certain eccentricities.  One of them being that I -- generally -- do not like foods that being with the letter “c.”


That includes “candy.”  I do not have a very well-developed sweet tooth.

 

But there is one big exception -- Smarties.  Those little discs of what appear to be compacted Pixie Stix.  Or Kool-Aid.  I am not certain there is any difference. 


But my tongue loves the combination of tart and sweet in those fruity white, yellow, pink, orange, purple, and green tablets.  They are one of the memories of my childhood in Powers.  My own little Rosebuds.


So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw a bag of candy in Walmart.  Little discs wrapped in clear cellophane.  And clearly labeled as “tangy candy.”  And that name -- “Aciditas.”  If they were not Smarties, they were their first cousins.


I grabbed my treasure and headed home.


No dream lasts for long.  And this one did not last past the Walmark parking lot.  I tore the bag open and unwrapped one of the cellophane packs.  There they were.  Just like Smarties.  Same shape.  Same feel.  Almost the same smell.


But reality kicked in just as the first tablet hit my tongue.  There was no tang.  Just sugar.  And no semblance of a fruity taste -- artificial or not. 


Worst of all was the consistency.  One crunch turns Smarties into its constituent Kool-Aid.  Not Aciditas.  They are harder than that lump candy grandmothers serve to their charges.  The type of candy that coagulates into one giant clump.  The stuff that gives meaning to "Hard Candy Christmas.”


The best thing about living in Mexico is that when I make these purchase errors, someone will gladly take the mistake off of my hands.  In this case it was the neighbor children.  They had none of my qualms about eating the stuff.  And I had no qualms about contributing to one of the world's highest rates of diabetes.


So, Dad.  I may not have mentioned you on Father’s Day.  But your legacy is sound. 


I am still “The Grape.”