Hey Kid, Want Some Candy?

My kids will do just about anything for candy. But for the most part I’ve tried to keep the junk out of the house. And when it does make it past the door, I attempt to manage its consumption. This is why everyone should have an Albany Jane on call to take their kids out for the annual Halloween rites.

When I was a kid I loved candy too. My grandfather the dentist always kept bowls full of Hershey’s miniatures all around the house. It was wonderful to visit him, and my in-laws are pretty much the exact same way

But that’s what grandparents and friends of the family are for, spoiling the kids.

The reason I don’t buy candy is that it’s full of junk. It’s not that I’m opposed to sweets. It is that I’m opposed to cheaply made sweets that use inferior ingredients. Besides from being a bit gimmicky, I had no problem with the lollipops they handed out at Masa’s in San Francisco after the meal.

So what was I doing at Target yesterday buying not one, but two bags of the stuff?

Valentines Day only explains one of the bags. Young Master Fussy needed to bring some kind of VD trinket in to his class. Last year we discovered the Friendly’s vouchers for free ice cream cones, and those were brilliant. Sadly, the Friendly’s business plan was less so.

In years past, in lieu of candy treats, I had bought packs of colorful pencils. Each one came with a card that I could thread the pencil through, and it made an adequate holiday offering.

You see, public school these days commemorate greeting-card-company-manufactured holidays with encouragement of mindless consumerism. The kids each decorate bags for VD the week before in anticipation. Then on the big day everyone goes around and stuffs treats into each other’s sacks.

It’s hard to imagine that in this day and age people would be comfortable with homemade treats. And I suppose we could have made something crafty at home. But who has the time? So instead, I picked up at the store a mega-box of Lik-m-aid Fun Dip pouches that are preformed into VD greetings.

All Young Master Fussy has to do is write his name and the recipient’s name on the “From” and “To” labels on the packet. And all I have to do is find a way to sleep at night knowing I just gave a bunch of kids something that under normal circumstances I would never let into my house.

But that’s may not be entirely true either.

Because yesterday Little Miss Fussy went above and beyond the call of duty. After a strenuous playdate, I asked her to sit through an hour-long meeting in relative silence. Sure, she had pens, paper, and an ample amount of snacks. But the meeting ran long. Instead of one hour, it was an hour and a half. She was tired and hungry, and the one thing that kept her held together at the seams was the promise of a lollipop if she behaved.

So I owed her.

What I didn’t owe her was a giant bag of Jolly Ranchers lollipops, but that’s all I could find in the mad dash through Target. And I certainly didn’t owe her two lollipops, but attempting to eat this candy on a stick is still a new skill for her. And she hasn’t figured out how to suck the candy without destroying the structural integrity of the stick.

Decapitating her first lollipop nearly brought her to tears. So I agreed to trade her the half-eaten specimen for a fresh one. That started out better, but ultimately resulted in the same fate.

This could have gone on and on forever, but I ended it by declaring nap time, which was preceded by teeth time. Little Miss Fussy was delighted by her red tongue and being able to spit pink.

We raise them classy over here.

It was interesting to see that neither candy had high fructose corn syrup and that both were made in Mexico. I also had no idea that in today’s global economy Mexico was a production hub for companies like Hershey’s and Nestle.

I shudder to think about what will come home from school today.

And just in case you are wondering. I’m totally delinquent in getting a VD gift for Mrs. Fussy. I hope to sneak away to one of our better liquor stores later today and find a lovely bottle of Scotch that the two of us can share, even though we won’t be able to crack it open until Friday night.

It’s a far cry from the lobsters and sparkling wine of the past. I blame our candy-riddled, television-obsessed, and emotionally needy children. Although that seems pretty much par for the course.