i remember ribbon candy

I like reading the headlines and skipping the story because getting the whole picture invariably makes life much less interesting. Give me a title and a catch phrase over content any day. In fact, if you create a site called betterporn.com and give your site the catch phrase, ‘Like porn. Only better.’ I will put it number one on my blogroll even if it’s just a link to a blank page. Ditto bettercrack.

Today I briefly learn from Yahoo News Headlines that people who are overweight have a blind spot when it comes to their obesity. I would read the whole story, but I get the idea. A detective walks into an interrogation room and asks a big fella in a sweat suit. ‘Don’t you think you should lose a few pounds?’ And when the big fella says, ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’, the detective pulls out a cream puff and says, ‘Maybe this will jog your memory.’ ‘No. I think I look fine.’

Likewise, this leads to my own interrogation daydreams, where I heroically withstand the non-scarring abuse, (though in all candor I must admit I recently screamed out my birth date, home address and social security number when the hairdresser accidentally tickled my neckline).

Detective: “How many drinks in one sitting would you consider to be excessive?”

Me: “Forty?”

Detective, tearing phone book in half and slamming both sides down on the table in front of me: “WRONG!”

Me: “Fifty?”

Fine. I have a blind spot. But I was tortured as a child. We had no candy in our home, just bottles of saccharin, which reminds me of going fishing with my grandfather out on the Pacific Ocean at 4 am, and when I asked for coffee I was rewarded with a steaming cup of Postum. I think that was the first time I ever cried in my 20s.

And when we did get to visit our other grandmother, the white one, she did have candy, but it was worse than being tormented by bottles of saccharin, ‘cause it was that ribbon candy, and it was always melded into 8 pound concrete blocks, and it would cut you when you tried to break off a piece.

Department of Social Services Counselor: “Don’t be afraid. You can tell me the truth about those marks on your hands and arms.”

Me, 8 years old, crying: “Okay.”

Department of Social Services Counselor: “Who cut you, Brandon?”

Me: “IT WAS THE CANDY!”

Department of Social Services Counselor: “Christ, now that’s a new one.” /Stamps ‘RECOMMENDS INSTITUTIONALIZATION’ on file.