Day 630 March 24, 2022

The Story of Popsicles

Some time, in the not so distant past, I purchased a package of replacement zipper pulls. The little ziplock bag is safely tucked away in the bottom of some drawer, or nestled in a box with sewing needles and thread. Trying to remember where I put it is like trying to answer a question on an exam that I did not study for. 

I was thinking I should get my jacket washed before putting it away for the season. I actually already put it away for the season once, but then pulled it out again because we’ve had a string of chilly days. 

This morning I was reading about how the Alps are losing snow days and that the famous ski resorts are left making their own snow or trying to preserve the previous season’s snow under blankets. There is a thought that gravity-fed snow machines might, over a decade of time, begin to rebuild a glacier through delicate accretion. 

When I was a child, we treasured Everlasting Gobstoppers for no reason other than they stretched the joy of possessing candy over an inordinate amount of time. I am not sure I ever desired one, they tasted like powdered sugar linoleum, if I remember correctly, but to break one open was to reveal the stratigraphy of colors, each concentric layer promised something new to look at when you drew the gobstopper out of your mouth between two fingers, shiny with saliva.

I once showed my brother that I could swallow the little yellow rubber pellets that shot out of our toy gun. I did it for no reason other than it was an object I could put in many mouth and swallow like a bitter aspirin. It was like staring at the sun, or smoking rhododendron leaves, there was no purpose. Apparently, when I was a toddler, I got into an open bottle of aspirin and consumed a frightening amount that caused an emergency ride to the hospital in a neighbor’s car. 

Playing doctor with myself, I once broke a mercury thermometer in my mouth. I guess I have been orally fixated. Children shouldn’t eat little rubber pellets, or aspirin, or mercury. But I suppose, those things are a part of who I am. They have been digested and processed, stripped of anything of purpose, and maybe tucked away somewhere, or expelled. A growing boy absorbs or breaks almost everything he comes in contact with.