The Candy Fasts

On the first day of my second-grade year of school, each student received a piece of candy from the teacher. The following internal dialogue ensued:

ME: Neato! I'm going to save this delicious piece of candy to eat when I get home.

ALSO ME: Why save it until you get home?

ME: You mean I should eat it now?

ALSO ME: No. I mean that you should eat it even later.

ME: Tomorrow?

ALSO ME: EVEN LATER!

ME: What can possibly be later than tomorrow?!

ALSO ME: The day after tomorrow!

ME: Gasp!

ALSO ME: Or next month!

ME: The horror!

ALSO ME: OR I JUST HAD A BRILLIANT IDEA! What if you wait to eat it until...HALLOWEEN!

ME: If seven years old wasn't too young for heart failure, my heart. Would be failing. Halloween is three months away!!!

ALSO ME: In fact, you should save ALL the candy you get for the next three months until Halloween!

ME: Why would I want to do that? Why?

ALSO ME: Because over the course of the next few months, on occasion you will be given a piece of candy. If you immediately eat that piece of candy, you'll enjoy it, but as soon as it's gone you'll feel sad and wish you had more candy.

ME: That's true. But eating more candy is what Halloween is for.
ALSO ME: Okay, on Halloween you collect a decent-sized amount of candy, right?

ME: Right.

ALSO ME: If you save all your candy and add it to that, you'll have an indecent-sized amount of candy instead. A veritable horde. A treasure trove. Virtually all the candy a seven-year-old child could want at her disposal.

ME: Ohhhh....

ALSO ME: So. Do you dig it, or do you dig it?

ME: When do we start?

From that moment on, not a morsel of candy passed my lips. Every bit of confection I was given was placed, intact in its brightly colored wrapper, on the drawing space inside my weasel.

 

I called it my weasel. It knew no other name.

 

My singular goal was the object of much discussion within the household.

FAMILY: Are you really going to save every piece?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Fools. You underestimate my power.

FAMILY: Saving your candy like that means you have a lot of willpower!

AWAKWARD MORMON GIRL: Or not.

FAMILY: There sure is a lot of candy on that easel.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What's an easel?

Finally, the 31st of October came. I dressed up as Sleeping Beauty (for the third year in a row) and went out to gather the last morsels of candy that would be the piece de resistance of my collection.

Then it was time to eat.

I swear heavenly choirs of angels were singing as I ripped open the wrapper of that first piece of candy and tore into it with my teeth.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh, candy! Oh, joy! Where have you been all my life aka the last three months? Sitting on my weasel, that's where. But now you will sit in my tummy.

I pulled out a book and began to read whilst savoring the chocolate. 'Twas perfection of the most perfect sort.

It took me several days and several good books to consume my veritable horde, my treasure trove. But even a horde doesn't last forever and even a trove must fail. As surely as the first piece of candy had been eaten, so, then, was the last.

ME: Wow. That was amazing.

ALSO ME: Toldja so.

ME: You were totally right. Saving my candy was worth it.

ALSO MR: Wanna do the same thing for Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter?

ME: Is an artist's workspace called a weasel?!