When I was a kid I always liked suckers (a.k.a. lollipops). Also, when my Dad would drive long distances, he always had a bag of hard candies (his vice of choice was Scotch mints). He always told me that sucking on a hard candy while tired and/or trying to focus helped him do so.
I suppose the sugar shot helped too.
But I digress.
I bought a bag of lollipops today, for those long lonely days at my home desk, and, as I was putting them in a jar, I held a red one for a moment, and a funny memory flooded back….
While I was in university, in grad school to be specific, I often had a bag of suckers in my desk. Similar to Dad, I’d found that jamming a lollipop in my cheek while I was trying to focus on some mentally challenging task while tired would help keep me going.
There was a day where we embarked on one of those exciting archeological events known affectionately as “The Lab Cleanup”.
Usually, during “The Lab Cleanup” many things would be unearthed that would result in exclamations of:
“Ooohhh….wonder who was using this chemical…what’s the date?”
“1975!”
“Clearly that was here before this lab group even existed or came along from Dave’s lab in Zoology when George set up shop over here in Animal Science.”
We’d find such exciting things as an undated dusty bottle of picric acid…..that would necessitate a call to the HazMat team and we’d all get kicked out of the lab because it might blow up.
Good times.
One year, during “The Lab Cleanup”, I was wiping down a bench top, a sucker stuffed in my cheek…. and Rob, our resident genius, suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and yelled at all of us.
“Everyone STOP!!!!”
We all looked at him curiously…..he was much, much, smarter than all of us combined…Erick called him “CD Rob” because his brain was so full of information.
Rob looked wildly around the lab and said, “Did anyone break a bottle?”
Everyone shook their heads….”no…”
Then he said “I think we need to evacuate, I smell cyanide!!”
We all were still for a moment….and I slowly stood up and equally slowly pulled the cherry lollipop out of my cheek, held it up high and sheepishly said…..”Sorry, my bad….cherry flavour….”
That was the last time I sucked on a cherry lollipop in the lab.
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