Dec 12
Chew on This
“Chew on this!”
by Laurence Simon (http://isfullofcrap.com/)
Posted as the text to the piece read by Kim, produced by me in the Podcast Pickle contest.
Nobody gets razor blades in apples anymore for Halloween. Why? Nobody gives out apples much anymore. And when’s the last time you’ve heard of kids going apple-bobbing?
No, it’s getting hard to tamper with Halloween treats these days. With all the paranoia making folks go to airports to run their candy through the x-ray machines, Reese’s Needle Cups is a thing of the past.
Do they still x-ray candy at the airports, or did the terror attacks make all the airport people busy taking off shoes and stuff like that?
Anyway, they’ve done all sorts of things to candy these days to make it hard to tamper with, Wrappers on candy get puffed out with nitrogen or vacuum-sealed. That’s so they’ll look funny if you stick a needle in them or rewrap a tampered candy bar. Or putting bad candy back in the plastic bag before sealing it up – that’s pretty obvious, too. You’ll see a scorch mark in the packaging where the label gets singed if you’re not careful.
Kinda takes the fun out of poisoning a few Fun Sizes, doesn’t it?
But there’s one thing that’s out there that’s easy to mess with and has the perfect packaging for it, too: bubble gum.
Individually-wrapped bubble gum uses twists on the ends of the wax wrapper to close it up. Rewrap it tightly and nobody will know the difference.
Even better, they sell the crap in bulk. Just buy up a pound, open the wrappers, spray whatever you want on them, wrap them back up, and slip them back in the bins.
The powdered sugar looks a lot like other less-appetizing white powders. And many of those white powders don’t take much to get Little Johnny Popsalot into a whole heap of trouble.
Worried about getting caught? Wear gloves – no DNA or fingerprints in the wrappers. Then, when the FBI comes around asking who was giving out the bad bubblegum, they finger the dumb sap with the big salad bowl full of them, tossing a few pieces into every ghost and goblin’s bag.
Okay, so you lose the thrill of seeing their greedy faces when they get the gum. But you still get to see their parents’ weeping faces in the hospital on the news.
I’ll be satisfied with seeing the beaming faces of my own kids when they realize the school bully won’t be beating them up anymore. When the popular kids won’t be telling them to go to the “losers” table. When the smart kids stop turning their D’s into F’s with the grade curve.
The district will send in grief counselors, but my kids won’t need them. Hell, they’ll be downright relieved not to suffer these daily humiliations anymore.
Hopefully not too happy, mind you. Hate to have them jumping for joy and someone connecting the dots all the way back to me here.
Am I worried that they’ll get the poison gum? Hardly. They don’t chew gum. Ever.
It’s a nasty, disgusting habit.
