Daily writing prompt

Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?

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Growing up, I was lucky to have parents who worked full-time, yet came home to cook a nutritious dinner for us every single night. Our meals were standard fare–salads were always on the table, every single night, along with some version of chicken, potatoes, pasta, meatloaf, Doukhobor vegetarian food–while the memorable things that stick out to me about food I ate as a kid were the things we were given when the babysitter was coming over: tins of Zoodles, Alpha-Getti, beans in tomato sauce. Apart from the beans, I wouldn’t ever eat both of the former now, so I’m not transported back.

But candy, well: that’s another story entirely. Especially 7-11 candy.

Now, in Canada, we have a distinction between candy and chocolate. We don’t say “candy bars,” we say “chocolate bars.” Chocolate is chocolate, which might be among the most intelligent notions I have ever had. Candy here, however, consists of things like gummy bears and jelly beans and peppermints and lollipops and licorice and boiled sweets and anything made of gelatin that’s crusted in tangy, sour sugar. That’s what swings me right back to childhood.

…because I certainly still eat candy. Not the way I used to, but I am no stranger to Haribo gummy cola bottles, or Maynard’s wine gums, or even a package of red Twizzlers. I developed an enormous sweet tooth as a child, because my parents were incredibly strict with junk food and snacks in our household (for which I now praise them effusively, and with extreme gratitude). When my older brother and I were around third or fourth grade, we were finally allowed one can of pop a week, and only on Fridays. They confiscated our Halloween candy and doled it out to us until I was about ten years old. They never bought Oreos or Fudgeeos or Chips Ahoy! or any processed cookies, because my mother liked to bake. We grew up on Shreddies, Corn Flakes, and Cheerios for breakfast on school mornings; weekends were for pancakes and eggs, and we were not allowed to eat our pancakes soaked with jam or syrup until we had one topped with a soft-boiled egg.

Since my brother and I were children of the glorious 80s, my folks consented to the odd novelty box of cereal once in a very blue moon, such as Ms Pac-Man cereal (I picked out all the marshmallows), Mr. T cereal (I think it was just corn crunchies), and Ghostbusters cereal (I really can’t remember it). But it was only one box of each, one time only, and we had to be happy with that one granted box.

…so when 7-11 opened down the hill from my house in my then-small town, it was the absolute biggest thing to hit Coquitlam. It was also one block from my elementary school, so although we weren’t allowed to leave without permission, plenty of us piled over there during lunch hour for 35-cent Slurpees and all sorts of goodies, which mainly consisted of Wonka-brand candy like Nerds, Eternal Gobstoppers, Bottle Caps, Fun Dip (worth it alone for that delicious Lik-A-Stik that you dunked into flavoured sugar!) Sweet Tarts, Runts…I have picked some of these treats up in the last several years despite the howling protest of my poor teeth, and every time I crunch through their contents, I am nine years old and back at Eagle Ridge Pool again in the summertime (the pool was even closer to 7-11 than my school; it was directly across from it), lounging on my towel and joyfully feasting on my high-decibel, sugary wares.

There were also Atomic Fireballs, Red Hots, Gold Rush nugget chewing gum, an array of five-cent candies of which we shoplifted pocketfuls, Jolly Rancher flat licking sticks, and a couple of new chocolate bars on the market called Twix and Skor.

Oh, 7-11 candy! All that candy, that delectable, tooth-pulverizing, tasty, awful, synthetic, irresistible corner-shop candy, will send me in a cyclone right back to being in a kid during the best decade you could be a little kid. I suppose the 50s were supposed to be a good era for children, or so I’ve heard, but you can’t beat the pastel palette of weirdness that was the 80s for being a child.