I don’t know about you, but my memories of childhood are not wonderful.
Take Halloween, for example. As I recall, I loved the idea of it: pumpkins, dressing up, getting free candy. When it came down to it, however, dressing up was a little embarrassing, not to mention uncomfortable (those 1960s-era plastic Fred Flintstone masks really didn’t allow you to breath very well). Also, going to strangers’ houses to ask for candy – in the dark, yet! – was sort of scary.
So I was pleased to hear this story from a coworker:
Her little boy, three years old, went out with his father to go trick-or-treating. They were gone for a suspiciously brief time; it turned out later that they’d gone to a total of five houses. But the little boy was deliriously happy. “I got so much candy!” he crowed.
And he dumped out his plastic bucket –
And he’d gotten maybe ten or twelve small pieces of candy.
But, to him, it was a windfall.
My friend is apparently very strict about her son's candy consumption, so he was very circumspect about eating anything from his bucket. “Can I have one piece now?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “But just one.”
He pulled out a fun-sized Kit Kat, unwrapped it, ate it, and went into a kind of satori. “Mamma,” he said, “what was that thing I just ate?”
“It’s called a Kit Kat,” she said.
“It is,” he said dreamily, “the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. Can I have another one?”
“One’s enough for now,” she said. “Maybe if you’re good tomorrow, you can have another.”
“Okay,” he said. He took another Kit Kat out of his Halloween bucket and laid it on the table. “I’m going to put this right here,” he said. “And it’ll be right here waiting for me tomorrow.”
That’s the nicest story I’ve heard in a long time.
And now I am going to have a Kit Kat.
But just one.
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