Pool Daze
It was hot here today. Really hot. Africa Hot. And, since we don’t have air conditioning I took a gang of kids to the pool to cool off.

While the pool is evacuated for “adult swim”, I take them to the snack bar. You’ve been to this place – maybe not this one, but you’ve seen it at any of the millions of community pools or little league fields. Staffed by a couple of high school kids, the menu is an impressive assortment of candy and soda with some other stuff thrown in to round out the selection.

We come upon a conversation already in progress… A grown-up lady is studying the ingredients on Starburst and giving the trio of teens the business. Lines like “I can’t believe everything you sell here is so bad for you… and the quick retort, “it can’t be worse than all the other stuff that clogs your arteries out there…”

Through Extreme Air Heads, Jolly Ranchers, 3 kinds of Gummy thingies and many more, the rant continues. The teens steadily slide from the slight worry that a member (it’s a private pool) is upset to complete and utter disinterest. Finally, she picks some candy for her kids and moves on.

While this whole exchange couldn’t have taken more than 5 or 10 minutes, the look on the kids faces in line was reminiscent of perestroika era bread lines. As bad as they thought it was, they had no idea how insane and insidious this event really was.

An adult theatrically studying the ingredient lists on candy and unequivocally professing loud and long that they are indeed, “bad for you”… and demanding they stock only “healthy” alternatives… Well, no shit Sherlock! It’s candy. No one ever said it was "good for you" - as a matter of fact, the fact that it isn't "good for you" has been hammered home by every Mom since Eve...

It reminds me of a few years ago when anyone with vocal cords assumed it was their responsibility as tax paying citizens to inform me that smoking is dangerous and that I was working on killing myself with each successive puff of the fine Dominican cigars I continue to enjoy but now only in private.

After getting past the urge to laugh out loud at this buffoon I had the impending feeling that the future might hold that this societal evil which inflicts untold (and unknown) amounts of pain and suffering will also be outlawed.

Innocents will no longer be taken advantage of by the large multi-national cartels who are funding diabolical laboratories doggedly pursuing flavinoids that will render even the most obedient pre-pubescent a loose cannon on the decks of our well scrubbed nation. We must save them from themselves. We must save them from us.