Scuttled

One Saturday during elementary school, my sister and I accompanied my mom on her errands. I use the word accompanied, but let’s be serious. We were young and didn’t have a choice. On our way home, my mom stopped to get gas and told us we could come inside and each pick out one thing from the gas station. I wouldn’t say this was necessarily a rare occurrence, but now that I’m older I have a feeling my mom had witnessed a lot of other kids having absolute meltdowns during those aforementioned errands and wanted to treat us for not being little terrors. OR maybe it was a bribe. Either way, it was exciting. To kids, gas stations are magical little shops with bright lights, tons of candy, and an ICEE machine. It’s paradise. (As I write this, I’m realizing parents spent far too much money on having kids birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese when they probably could have just driven us to Circle K and told us to go wild. Add some balloons and I would have been quite content.)

So my sister and I walk into the gas station and immediately turn down the junk food aisle. We both bypassed the chips and pretzels and such (we weren’t amateurs. This was no time to play with savory treats) and made a beeline for the candy. Airheads, Fun Dip, Twix bars, Snickers- our little eyes could barely process the seemingly limitless amount of choices. Pretty much everything was fair game except bubble gum (thanks to an unfortunate incident regarding me, my mom’s velour car upholstery, and bubblicious watermelon wave.)

Jessica picked something like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups- an amateur move no doubt. Why you ask? Because while delicious, Reese’s is essentially only two pieces of candy. She’d be done with that in under a minute. I, on the other hand, went with Skittles. Its bright red bag promising at least five to ten minutes of chewy, sugary goodness. I was nothing if not a rational person.

Back in the car, my prediction came true. Jessica was quickly out of candy. (I may have laughed.) What I did not anticipate was the possibility of a hostile takeover. Obviously embarrassed by her poor candy choice, Jessica retaliated by attempting to take mine. (I think she even tried to use the word “share” as if that made it less ridiculous.) Unfortunately for her, when it came to candy, I fought back.

Unfortunately for me, my mom had long arms. Long arms which she used to reach into the backseat and grab my Skittles, before proceeding to throw them out of the car window onto Skinner Mill Road. “If you girls can’t behave, then you don’t get candy!”

“MOM! THOSE WERE MINE! JESSICA ALREADY ATE HERS!”

I recognized the look in my mom’s eyes- the look of “sh*t. I made a mistake.” But it was the 90’s and unless you were in a Nickelodeon sitcom, parents did not admit making mistakes. That showed weakness. Plus it was my parents’ date night, so she wasn’t about to turn around to go buy me more Skittles so she just turned up the radio and told us to quiet down.

Fuming, I looked over at my sister, who just smiled and then looked out the window. Content and full of Reese’s.