Dear Taffy,
You’re not a candy. You’re a dental payment plan wrapped in wax paper that may or may not have been recycled from someone’s discarded floss.
During the post-summer sale, I bought two boxes and received one complimentary box of cavities. A three-for-one deal, and only one of the three is free.
Every year, I swear I’m done. Every year, I’m proven wrong.
You’re less a confection and more a dental booby trap, half nostalgia, half gum graft. I spend ten minutes every winter prying you loose with the determination usually reserved for removing windshield ice.
Still, you’re hard to hate.
I imagine the dentists and taffy vendors holding quarterly strategy meetings somewhere. “We’ll handle molars, you handle marketing.” A perfect ecosystem: sugar, decay, repeat.
And now it’s spring. The boardwalk is waking up. The display cases are getting restocked, the shore smell is coming back, and somewhere a taffy-yellow tie is being straightened in a mirror. Summer is six weeks away, and you know it before I do. You’ve been waiting. Patient, waxy, optimistic.
I unwrap another anyway.
Must be the sugar.
Yours, against my better judgment, A Jersey Shore Resident