SUGAR HIGH... a cavity odyssey

Pic by StevePBon Pixabay.com

When I was a kid and I mean I was one real kiddo in my day and it was great. I started entrepreneurship early in life just for one thing and one thing only, candy. A little store very close to the little house I grew up in had plenty of it to fulfill my every candy desire. 

 

He had liquor and dirty magazines as well but I was interested in the candy aisle. I would buy that candy by the bagful; spend everything I had on it every time. Once my candy horde was almost finished, and that never took long, then I would do some other thing, to get more money for more candy.

 

They let kids run around free in those days, picking up odd jobs, collecting bottles they paid five cents a piece for and you could turn in at the same little store. We would take little red wagons filled with bottles and get the money for bags of candy.

 

I didn’t know I was getting a rush from the sugar, this was normal every day living, it became part of my biology. Life included candy and consequently life also included cavities.

 

I hated the dentist because that guy he would scream and yell at kids. I could hear kids freaking out just on that other side of that door that I had to go into next. That dentist never screamed at me though, I was one of his real cash cows. It was typical for me to have several cavities not just two or three. There were other kids I knew that beat my records.

 

I thought that was normal, seemed all those kids back then had the same thing going on. It never stood out that this wasn’t normal to have tons of cavities. Brush more they said but hey I brushed as a kid during all that candy time and I learned when I grew up what the real culprit of cavities was.

 

You are thinking now, well didn’t she listen to the teachers? I was a kiddo like I said and like most kids some things stick and some things don’t. I liked my life I wasn’t willing to even consider not being a candy girl.  Those memories remain the sweet innocent part of my life.

 

Eventually, I grew up as we all do and I actually stopped eating candy. My adult brain finally connected the dots. I noticed the lack of energy that lasted longer than the small burst I got from a sugar rush. I moved on from sugar to better things that gave me a lot of energy and no backlash of feeling tired out afterward. I stopped eating candy and I stopped having cavities.

 

I was shocked when the dentist first told me I had no cavities. What? How could this be, he must be lying to me. I am a young woman by this time and I have learned men sometimes have a problem when it comes to that group and they lie. But nope he wasn’t lying he showed me the x-rays of all clear.

 

Once I had children, when they were very young and before they entered the giant world of kindergarten where your control is first lost, I kept all sugar out of their diets. I mean I didn’t go nuts on it reading every label for it. I just didn’t give them candy. They didn’t get ice cream they didn’t candy suckers they didn’t get any mainstream sweets. I didn’t want my little kids to feel left out of the candy world of kids so I lied to them and told them that frozen yogurt was ice cream and they loved it.

 

They got as excited about that frozen yogurt as if it was real ice cream. Every sweet treat my little kids got they thought was a sweet candy, when it was actually a super good sweet tasting nutritious food. Of course when they started school they realized the great lie their mom had told them. But they didn’t have a developed sweet tooth now either. Though candy became part of their life, as it does for everyone, it was only around Halloween that we celebrated with gusto back then.

 

All of my kids are grown now and they are all health conscious and I get little credit for it. My youngest is married now with his own kiddos, well they are just babies, twins in fact. Yes I am proud thank you. His sweet wife told me he insists that real ice cream always be available in the freezer. We both laughed when she told me. But what they all realized is that what I did saved them all from cavities. Unlike me not one of them ever got a cavity and to this day, out of three kids, only one got one cavity. Food or should I say, candy for thought.