Return of the Gummi Monster

'A Christmas Story', the movie, always reminds me of when I was growing up with my older brother. Especially the part where Ralphie keeps checking the mail every day for his Ovaltine Orphan Annie decoder. When we were kids, my brother saved up box tops from General Mills cereal products, for a pedometer that you wore on your belt so you would know how far you walked. For weeks after he sent in his box tops and fifty cents, he would run to the mail box hoping that the pedometer would be there. Unfortunately it never arrived, and from that point on every time we saw an ad on the television for Betty Crocker, who we believed ran General Mills, we would yell out "You mean Betty Crooker!".

I love getting surprises in the mail. Not bad surprises but good ones, like when my mom sends me clippings from the local papers, or when my sister in-law sent Molly a gift package. It seems like a mini Christmas when I check the mail and there is something besides magazines and bills in there.

That's why it was fun to go out to the mail box today and find a little package from my niece Laura. After opening the bills and throwing away the junk mail, I sat down and opened the package. What the hell is this strange blob she sent me, I wondered? It wasn't until I turned on a bright light that I realized she had sent me a box of Gummi Bears. You see, she hadn't allowed for the extreme heat of Florida in the summer, and all the little bears had melted into one big glob of multi-flavored goo. Of course that didn't stop me, within a few minutes I had eaten my way through half of it. I'll tell you one thing, mother was right about eating too much candy. It really does give you a belly ache.