Socks Without Partners

VOMIT JELLY BEANS? YUMMMY! MORE PLEASE!!!!

I’d like to know who the sick freak is who made a jelly bean taste like VOMIT.

Saturday. Staples in Coquitlam. School Supply Shopping, a holiday deserving no less reverence and honor than its nearest holiday relatives, Christmas and Easter. Dad has the Wee Boyz across the highway at Monopoly-On-The-Toy-Market-In-Canada, trying to keep them entertained in all that is toyish while Yaunna and I skip gaily through the aisles, hand in hand, arms swinging, warm sunlight bathing our tanned faces, a light breeze wisping the downy hair of our bare arms. Butterflies take to their gentle flight, flitting from one display case of pencil cases to the nearby stack of student dictionaries. Birds chirrrrup happily, dogs and cats lick each other’s ears clean, even Muslims and Jews decide to call off all this nonsense in Gaza and just build a Costco and Starbucks on the Strip instead.

We found pencils. We found paper. We found white-out, Duo-Tang report covers in seven colors, fine tip markers, pencil crayons, and white rubber erasers. Simply Divine.

Dad finishes with the gluttony at the Sodom & Gomorrah R Us and returns to extract us from the warm sunlight of the office supply store before we visit irreparable damage on his Mastercard. (Sometimes the sun gets to me.) He brings with him a treat for Yaunna. “I got you Bertie Botts Beans,” Dad announces.

“Woohoo! Thanks, Daddy!” Hug, smooch. All this love over a box of jelly beans and I’ve just spent the lion’s share of our monthly budget on pencils? There is no justice.

“Mom, these are not just any jelly beans,” Yaunna explains. “These are BERTIE BOTTS BEANS – from ‘Harry Potter,’ Mom.” DUH. I shoulda known. If it ain’t about a dog, it’s gonna be Harry Potter.

Some people get their britches in a bind about all the HP stuff – “It’s witchcraft” or “It’s the work of Satan.” Last time I checked, it said JK Rowling on the front – no mention of Satan anywhere. My ex-husband’s new wife (she’s not really new—she’s actually the third wife and I only call her the New Wife because she was the one he was seeing while I was still pregnant with Yaunna, so even though they’ve been married for, like, nine years, she will always be the New Wife to me). ANYWAY, she told me years ago that if Yaunna was coming to their house for a summer visit—which never happened—she wouldn’t be allowed to bring the Harry Potter book she was reading because it was Satan’s work and black magic and yada yada yada.

New Wife should know about the witchcraft stuff, I s’pose…at least the bewitching sort. I know some real witches that would eat their own frogs before stealing another woman’s husband, but New Wife was quite crafted in that respect. BUT, that is all water and suds under the Very Grateful He Left And Shacked Up With Her So I Could Grow My Brain Back Bridge.

Harry Potter? Work of the devil? REALLY? And all this time I just thought it was pretty damn great that my 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-, almost 12-year-old daughter was reading books rivaling the length of Tolstoy’s best efforts and actually ENJOYING herself. Operative word here: READING. There are a number of adult children on the planet who would have been helped considerably if their own generation had something like Harry Potter to entice them into the realm of reading. And I think I speak for millions when I say that there is a special place in my heart for Former Single Mothers Who Become Billionaires.

I am all over the place here—probably has something to do with my dumb kids who are currently ARGUING over the stupid computer games that came in the varying varieties of Cheerios they coerced me to buy on Saturday. To quote a particularly melodramatic, overweight woman I used to know who was convinced that she had diabetes and therefore needed to have a milkshake every two hours, “I CAN'T THINK A THOUGHT—-now stop at McDonald’s, quick.”

Back to the Bertie Bott’s Beans. We loaded into the Overpriced Leased Family Car and prepared to leave The Land of Fruit and Pencils.

“Wait! I forgot iron-on paper!” Dad says.

“So go back and we’ll wait.” Lucky bastard gets to go back into the store ALONE.

“Here, Mom – try this one.” Yaunna hands me a jelly bean. Yummm. This one tastes sorta fruity.

“Hey, can I see the box?” I ask. Oh, they’re manufactured by Jelly Belly—there’s no way that they will really taste like ‘green grass,’ ‘earthworm,’ ‘spinach,’ or ‘ear wax.’ And CERTAINLY there won’t be one that tastes like vomit.

“These are good, Yaun,” I boast. “See, they aren’t REALLY flavored like all these disgusting things.” I know everything. I Am Mother, Hear Me Roar. I hand her the box back and suck the remnants of that fruity bean out of my teeth while I wait for Husband.

“Here, Mom-—try one’a mine,” Brennie says.

“Sure thing. Thanks, Bren.”

“That one looks like Tutti Frutti, Mom,” pipes Yaun.

POP! Chew, chew, chew…OMIGOD—IT’S NOT TUTTI FRUTTI.

It’s VOMIT.

I open the car door and empty the contents of my burning mouth onto the pavement. Hurriedly I search the console of the Overpriced Leased Family Car for anything to drink-—dead diet Coke, curdled soy in a lost Kendon bottle, motor oil-—to rinse the VOMIT from my mouth.

I’m gonna sue these a**holes. I’d like to know the sorry suck who volunteered to have his stomach bile extracted in order to replicate the taste of vomit for these "magical" jelly beans. Even worse, who was stupid enough to volunteer for the panel to sample these beans?

New Wife, were YOU in on this? I shoulda known.

posted by JSY @ 11:12 AM