4. A Close Call with Candy Corn

Okay, so I'm pretty sure we can all agree that Candy Corn is probably like the 3rd best candy on Earth. Why #3, you ask? Are there really 2 better treats out there? Well, I'm willing to delve deep into the horrors of my past (a task for which I feel fully qualified, since I got a C in Psych 101 my freshman year of college) to explain why it's truly a wonder that I'll even touch the stuff.
9th grade was an awkward time for me. I was like 5 foot nothing, a hundred pounds, and everyone who knew me could attest that I was in the middle of yet another "really awkward looking phase". A few years later I figured out that if you weren't overly popular in junior high or high school, you could just fake it, do your own thing, and act like you were the most popular person around, and sooner or later it would end up being true. But that wasn't the case in 9th grade. I really wanted to fit in, but didn't. My own group of friends was a little different. We were all too smart for our own good, so we stuck together, but I was a little too odd, even for them.

So, early on in the year, we went on a retreat up in the mountains. It was a mixed retreat, which didn't bode well for me...since I was terrified of girls. We were staying in cabins just big enough for my friends and I. We had all packed warm clothes, cards, homework, and snacks. Being close to Halloween, I procured a jumbo bag of candy corn, and packed it in my duffel bag.

The retreat was fairly uneventful, until the evening before we went home, when everything changed. I went hiking with a few friends and even some girls, and I had even built up enough confidence to speak with them. But when we got back and went to grab our jackets, our cabin had been ransacked. While we were gone, some of my friends had thought it would be funny (looking back on things, they were right) to dump out all of my stuff everywhere, but their crowning achievement was dumping my entire bag of candy corn into a pair of my underwear and hanging it from the light in the middle of the room. Everyone had been waiting for our return, and they all ran in, laughing and cheering, and all I could do was clean up my stuff, hanging my head in shame.

This was the beginning of the end for me and my friends. I never got over the humiliation and the betrayal, and it was the last time I ever wore tighty whities (I bet mom never realized that candy corn was the main reason behind my 9th grade migration to boxers.) I turned into a loner, and started working on figuring out where I really fit in, but I never gave up on candy corn.

I'm prone to believe that there was really only one batch of candy corn ever made, and they are still bagging it and selling it after all these years, but it's really just some corn syrup, sugar, honey, and a little bit of edible wax...that should be able to last a few hundred years no problem. I really wish, however, that people would stop calling it a seasonal treat. Is there only one season where people eat real corn? No. So why shouldn't it be alright to eat candy corn all year long? It should be, and from now on, it is.

I hereby declare that Candy Corn is now acceptable all the time. Enjoy!