Lollipops
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Although this quotation is usually attributed to P.T. Barnum, a biographer was not able to confirm that he said these exact words. Friends and acquaintances claimed that it would have been out of character for Barnum, whose credo was more along the lines of “there’s a customer born every minute.”
Wrappers
For the last few months I’ve begun paying for things in cash, cash only, do you hear me? I collect all of my receipts in a Ziploc freezer bag that I keep in a filing cabinet in my office, like crime scene evidence. I fantasize about plastering them on my bathroom wall or turning them into a papier-mâché sculpture I could try to sell on Etsy.
Child Catcher
A white box with a lid which had the words “Lollipops are for good little boys and girls” on the front in black and red Gothic letters hung over the butcher block counter in the kitchen of the house I grew up in. It resembled a tiny birdhouse, like one you might spot in the distant meadows of an Audubon reservation, easy to home in on, easy to enter. It was neighbored on all sides by other, less useful knick-knacks: a hand-painted rooster, lacquered and shiny; a dark brown wooden shelf with an antique pewter vase perched on it; a framed poem I wrote in calligraphy in the 5thgrade. My mother kept the box packed with Dum Dums, and if my brother or I wanted access, we had to climb up on a stool, kneel on the countertop, remove the lid, and reach in and grab one. If she hung it at that height as a deterrent, or a method of candy distribution control, it failed miserably. We eventually restocked it ourselves.
Flavors
Credit cards were first issued in the 1920s by oil companies and hotel chains. Researchers also say that credit cards back in those days were not made of plastic but most probably from metal coins, metal plates, celluloid, fiber, or paper. My Citizens Bank Green Checking VISA debit card is made of 85% recycled materials and has a picture of a tree on it.
I Want Candy
Twenty Dum Dum wrappers plus one dollar plus two dollars for shipping and handling buys a yellow Frisbee with the Dum Dum Drum Man on it. I own a key chain and a circular mousepad (an additional eight dollars plus shipping and handling). I used wrappers from pops my children had eaten to purchase these items.
Who Loves Ya, Baby?
The last time I attempted to use a checkbook register was when there was no such thing as online banking. I would sit with a calculator, flipping over my bank statement to the side that explained how, exactly, to balance your checkbook, adding and subtracting as carefully as I could. It never, ever worked. I would get so close. Off by $1.32. An exact amount, like $40, would give me hope that reconciliation was within my grasp—that had to be some forgotten ATM withdrawal, right? A slip that just got shoved to the bottom of my backpack? But $1.32 meant that it was over, that all my father’s attempts to tutor me in intricacies of higher level math had failed. I had become that college graduate that could not perform this simple task, this simultaneous walking and chewing gum of “financial literacy.”
Cavities
According to parenting books, the modern American child needs three piggy banks: one for saving, one for spending, and one for donating. We have those, but my daughter just wants to spend, spend, spend. She set up a lemonade stand last summer and did not name a charity to which proceeds would be going. When she asked me what “saving” means, I told her, “Well, saving is when you put money in the bank so it collects, and then you have a lot of it for a time you might need it in the future.”
“What do you do with it then?”
“You spend it. On something big, of course. Like a car. Or a house.”
I don’t think the logic of this was lost on her. You save…to spend. All money eventually enters the world in exchange for what we want or need, or else it just sits in the bank, hoarded like lollys long since melted and stuck together. So whether she puts her quarters in her “save” piggy bank or her “spend” piggy bank, one way or the other she’s getting the ballerina outfit for her Build-A-Bear.
Empty Calories
Can it be said that one “eats” a lollipop? They don’t satisfy hunger. I could probably eat twenty and still be starving. A moment of sweetness comes at first lick, recognition of a taste occurring in nature replicated on the assembly line. Sticking out your tongue to see whose tongue has turned the brightest green or blue is fun for a while—until it’s not. The top of the stick turns wet and gummy. If it’s not too far gone, you can start unraveling it and measure how long the paper is. It could be anything. A master’s degree. A Lands’ End catalog. A hundred dollar bill that one financial guru suggests stashing in your wallet so you always feel rich.
Why We Suck
“Most consumers do not have anything against them on any level,” maintains Jordi Ferre, vice president of marketing for Chupa Chups USA. “It’s a very playful, emotional product that brings most consumers back to the fun part of their childhood. And yet they don’t associate eating lollipops with being childish or something to be ashamed of—rather, they find it to be sexy, and they enjoy flirting with it. Lollipops really raise a lot of emotions that other categories do not. There’s a lot of emotion and psychology embedded in the sale of the product.”
We Wish to Welcome You to Munchkin Land
Dum Dum Pops were originated by Akron Candy Company in Bellevue, Ohio, in 1924. I.C. Bahr, an early sales manager, named the ball-shaped candy on a stick, figuring “Dum Dum” were words any child could say.
Licking It
I inherited some money from my mom when she died of cancer at the age of sixty-two. I paid off debts and started 529s for both of her grandchildren. I hope she’d be okay with me blowing a big chunk of it on a trip to Disney World the following year. It was sweet. And the oversized, overpriced, naturally and artificially flavored Donald Duck Blue Raspberry “Wishable” lollipops didn’t break the bank.
A New England native, Amy Faeskorn lives and writes in rural South Georgia. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She’s currently taking baby steps on a YA novel inspired by her former middle school students.