I’m not a big fan of suckers or lollipops these days. There is something gross to me about the idea of putting something into my mouth, removing it from my mouth, and putting it back in, but when I was a kid I thought they were okay. The most popular sucker that was given out at my elementary school were these caramel apple things. I must have had a thousand of them. Kids were eating them all the time until one day I saw a girl eating a a different sucker. It was one with a worm in it.
Almost every sucker I had at school was one I got from school. So I assumed she also got this one from school too, and I was aghast that the school would give out such a thing. I mentioned it to her, I said, “Hey there’s a thing in your sucker!” And she said, “I noticed that. I can just eat around it.” I was blown away by the fact that she had no problem with this worm in her sucker. I didn’t see if she actually finished the sucker or not, but for years it has bothered me. I was convinced that this girl had no sense of sanitation (or sanity for that matter). I imagined all the worst things about her: She probably had lice and dandruff.
Related to that story I had an epiphany: One time someone was explaining to me why you shouldn’t watch a good movie with just a few bad scenes in it. They said to me, “You ”could” skip the bad parts, but imagine a bowl of ice-cream, delicious in all aspects, save one, there is a little chunk of poo in it. Would you eat the ice-cream? After all you could just skip the poo and eat around it.” I hated that metaphor the moment I heard it, but I didn’t realize exactly why I hated it until now. Originally I merely thought that a bowl of ice-cream isn’t really comparable to a movie, but now after reflecting back on the lollipop I know that, indeed, you can just eat around something gross. That girl proved it to me.
Oh, by the way, I looked it up. Apparently suckers with worms in them are a thing, and that girl was playing a cruel joke on her classmates by eating it in front of us.
