Sweet Memories

These days all you hear about is how to eat healthier, lose weight and get fit. It’s all for the good, but sometimes it’s fun to go back to when you were a kid.

Remember all the games you used to play? Board games like Scrabble, Monopoly and Life. Tag, hide n’ seek.

Running around, riding bikes, skating, rolling down grassy hills.

Ok, I’m getting a little idealized here. So let’s have a little fun. Let’s remember the candy!

What were your favorites? Licorice? Chocolate? Laffy Taffy?

I remember the delight of the days when I was first old enough to go to the store to buy candy on my own. No parents to tell me I couldn’t have it. Lemonheads were always one of my favorites.

My sisters and I no doubt spent way too much of our allowances on candy, but it was sooo much fun! We’d hide it so that our mother wouldn’t find it, but throw the wrappers straight into the trash after eating the candy. My mother laughed about that to me once a couple years ago, but I still think the logic works. The candy had been eaten after all; she couldn’t undo that, so what did it matter if she knew then?

Halloween was, of course, the best. As we got older we got to be the kids that went around the neighborhood later than just about anyone else, so the people who didn’t want to have leftover candy would just dump their excess on us. No worries back then about poison.

Hiding our Halloween candy was pretty much a competitive art form. We were always trying to find the best places to hide each individual piece. Of course, that meant that every here and there we’d find a piece that had clearly been hidden for a year or more... yuck! But it meant that Halloween candy lasted quite a bit longer than it would have otherwise.

Despite my best resolutions these days, I still love candy. Chocolate is my main weakness now, but I know how to be pretty good about it, buying the small bars so that I get the taste without having a whole regular sized bar. But then come those days when I have to get into my old favorites. I love how Lemonheads feel on a sore throat.

Yes, it does pay to eat healthy. But everything in moderation, and that includes moderation. Sometimes you just have to enjoy a few old memories. Share them with your kids or keep them to yourself, but just enjoy.