Life Lessons Writ in Sugar

Found myself on a train of thought today that started with the soda I was drinking at a soccer game and ended with apple-sized jawbreakers and gummy rats.

For two summers while I was in college, I worked at a soda fountain/candy store in the small West Coast town where my parents lived at the time.  The summer after freshman year, there wasn't much else available for me to do because I wasn't experienced enough for internships yet.  After senior year, I knew exactly what I was getting into with grad school and wanted one more low-stress summer at home before heading to the gulag in the fall.  So I weighed candy and scooped ice cream and turned out waffle cones for tourists again.

Figured out a couple of things on that job.

1) People who said that they were trying to lose weight often ordered the biggest sundae on the menu and a diet soda.  The filter between my brain and my mouth got a real workout sometimes.

2) It is actually possible (as unlikely as it sounds) to get so sick of sweets that you stop eating them even when you are surrounded with sugary deliciousness of every possible description all day long.  

3) Nothing good happens when you eat a quarter-pound of dark chocolate-covered coffee beans in one sitting.  Trust me on this.  On the subject of personal health, it is also a profoundly bad idea to try to scoop ice cream from a canister that one has only recently retrieved from the blast freezer: concrete is softer and wrists pay the price.

4) I was lucky to have had the opportunity to go to college.  Most of the people I worked with had not, and some were decades older than me and still hourly employees.

That last one was the big lesson.  At the end of the summer, I started grad school and never looked back.  And all these years later, I still don't miss the gummy rats.