• Tag Archives Fruity Pebbles

  • “My body is a temple where junk food goes to worship”

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

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    One of my weaknesses. Fruit Stripe Bubblegum.

    Generally my whole pack gets used up in about an hour, stuffing each unusually flavored stick into my mouth in an effort to absorb as much junky goodness as my mouth can handle.

    In my childhood, I might have kept it a bit longer, but my jaw gets tired (and sore) after about 15 minutes. This is good, because Fruit Stripe is notorious for the quick loss of flavor.

    If it didn’t remind me so much of Fruity Pebbles in gum form, I probably wouldn’t ever buy it – but occasionally the nostalgic neurons start firing up at the sight of the psychoholic wrapper.

     


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  • “Ecstasy is a glassful of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.” Alexander Pushkin

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    I was going to write a post about what a bizarre, bizarre week it has been at work but at the last-minute I got lazy. Here we go.

    When I was a kid, as I have mentioned before, my mother was very strict on sugar. Back in the 70’s, they hadn’t started diagnosing kids with ADD or ADHD (as far as I know).  I’d had some behavioral problems at school (acting out, talking back, fights, etc) and my mother was cleanly convinced that sugar was a culprit. Either that, or she was trying to counteract my poor diet (no fault of my own) by limiting sugar around the house.

    As we know now, limiting yourself from anything is a bad idea; it makes your body crave it more.

    So I became a sugar fiend. Massive massive sugar fiend. If I had money, we would walk down to Cunningham Pharmacy (where the giant Kroger is now) and buy lots and lots of candy – that I obviously wasn’t supposed to be eating.

    One of the side effects of the embargo on sugary substances was that none of the trashy, sugary, immensely bad for you cereals made their way in. Sure, occasionally they’d throw me a bone. I clearly remember getting a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur skeleton out of a box of Fruity Pebbles (my cereal-crack of choice) and hiding out in the closet with it.

    But somehow, some way, I was tricked into thinking that I liked Kix.

    Yes, Kix. (Vintage box because I couldn’t find an 80’s version)

    Kix_box

    I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t like it at some point.  I can’t imagine how that even satiated my sugar craving (it didn’t). I do recall Pele appearing on a Kix box at one point, and I can’t be sure, but at some point I decided to play soccer.  Probably peer pressure from all the jocks at my school that I was mysteriously forced to hang around. Not sure how that worked.

    My parents dutifully got me a pair of cleats and I played my first and last game of soccer.

    Turns out there’s a lot of running.

     


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  • “One little natural disaster, a refinery fire, any type of instability in various parts of the world could push us over that edge.” Mantill Williams

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    I have been taking a CERT training class for the past few weeks. This class is helpful in my ongoing “man maintenance” where I become (theoretically) more capable of self support in times of crisis. I got to put out a fire two weeks ago – with a fire extinguisher.  How many times before that had I actually used a fire extinguisher in my life? ZERO.

    When I was a kid, my father thoughtfully installed a small fire extinguisher into my my closet in my bedroom.  I never used it – and rarely thought about it.  My paranoia did not extend so much to fires.  It was fully occupied with fear of monsters under my bed, ghosts/dead things/aliens in my closet, and how I would actually escape a fire from the second floor of my home.  Yes, fire was involved, but my fear wasn’t of the fire – it was of breaking my legs jumping out the window. I recall at some point asking for a fold down ladder, but I was talked out of it. “Just hang on to the ledge and fall, you don’t need to jump”

    Early on, my closet was a refuge from light when anxiously clutching a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur skeleton obtained from a box of Fruity Pebbles.  Later, however, the small door that led from the closet to the attic taunted me with the fear that I might be dragged in there by something unimaginable. Having watched Creepshow, Poltergeist, and Close Encounters of the Third kind – I know it was possible.

    The last time I checked the fire extinguisher, it was dead (never used). Just writing this brings back a memory of an “educational” film that they made us watch in elementary school (Parker if I recall). They were illustrating fire’s effect on blood. They heated up a hotplate and when it got nice and toasty dripped some blood on it. It spattered and boiled nicely (as expected). Shock therapy for budding pyromaniacs. It scared me, but never stopped me from burning matches endlessly.

    I bought two fire extinguishers today. Home safety – yeah!


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