I remember when I was younger, the whole motivation for me to get a job was not necessarily to get money and be rich or have money saved for retirement (all far-seeing abstract concepts, hard for a 7-year old to fathom), but to get CANDY.
My main goal was to get candy.
Lots of it.
And how did I get candy?
It was either to wheedle and bug the hell out of my parents to get candy when we were in the store (rarely worked), hoard it when I did get any so that when a craving hit, I would have a whole shoebox stash to choose from, or to well.. make money so I could buy whatever I wanted.
See, to hoard said candy, my mother on occasion would go to Costco and buy huge boxes of candy like sour keys, KitKats, Mars Bars..
The problem was that it wasn’t always what I wanted to eat – Cadbury Fruit & Nut? EWW… the raisins were such a sharp, sour contrast to all of that delicious milk chocolate that should have been left well enough alone to shine as the creamy, delicious sugar rush that it was – and it was only on occasion when we were good.
We would get a Mars Bar as a treat, or just on a whim…
It even got to the point where she would be able to leave said candy in their proper boxes out in the cupboards and we wouldn’t really touch it, except to snag a bar here and there on occasion but even that was not often because we knew if the box disappeared too quickly, my mother would kibosh this whole free of-your-own-volition sort of candy box rule and these would go under lock and key hidden somewhere around the house. We were disciplined enough to be in control of ourselves and kept the candy train rolling.
My mother, was kind and generous and loved candy.
She also loved giving candy to children to make them happy. Her favourite candies unfortunately, were disgusting for a small child, and still are to my adult self.
What I did do, was hoard what I did get as candy. If I got a Mars Bar as a treat, instead of ripping open the wrapper like my eldest sibling and devouring it like an animal and then trying to beg other siblings to take pity on your Mars Bar free-life, I would save that bar. In a shoebox.
Then if the time came when my eldest sibling came sniffing around for candy but didn’t want to walk to the store to buy it, I would resell these bars at an inflated price, then take that money, go to the store, and buy more bars with the profits, etc.
I had a little candy empire in a shoebox, let’s put it that way.
That said, I did eat my profits.
I especially enjoyed eating Cadbury Crème Eggs because it sounds really gross now to my adult years, but I would take at least two weeks to finish one.
I’d open a Cadbury Crème Egg and bite off the chocolate top, nibbling it, really, day after day, until I got the top open enough to get to the sweet sugary cream on the inside, which I would then lick out little by little.
I was pretty much Charlie Bucket from my favourite book Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl.
Side note: Cadbury Crème eggs have definitely been getting smaller due to companies trying to squeeze out profits from this cash cow (cash egg?) since they have since debuted, and it has nothing to do with how small I was when I ate my first one. This has been proven.
The first eggs were BIG, the 2.0 eggs today? About 2/3 of the original size. I can feel it in my hand.
I know what I am eating. I ate many of those in my day and I remember how many bites it took to finish each egg.
As it stood, I understood that Money = Candy. And from that day on, I started working to buy said candy.
Then as I got older, I used the money to buy stickers, books, clothes (well that hasn’t really changed.. LOL).. and whatever my heart desired like more treats, but things like macarons instead:
