Now and Later – PART 1 of 4

Remember the candy “Now & Later”?
I think they still make this, at least in gummy format. Back in the day, it was hard candy. It was so slow to dissolve in a kid’s mouth that they called it “Now & Later” because you could eat it for a long time NOW, and then put it back in the wrapper until LATER, when you felt like giving it another round.

It seemed really cool at the time in my “kid mind”. Now, hmm. Sounds a little gross. Hardened saliva is no longer one of my favorite things, I have to admit. But you don’t think about that when you are a kid.

Now if it were a sibling’s saliva, well that would have been a game-changer. That’s one of the all time kid-rules of life – never ever eat anything that a brother or sister has salivated on. EVER!

I remember one time my mother made us three boys some cherry popovers. Oh how we loved those! The package came with the popover dough and the cherry filling, and even a special icing package to drizzle over the popover just after baking. Yum!

So there were three of us boys, and six popovers. I don’t know what it was like growing up in your house, but in our house, us three boys could eat a regular size bison each in one sitting. My mother used to buy us three new gallons of milk A DAY – yes, we each put that much milk away. Of course today we are all over 6 feet tall and very fast metabolizers.

So in our adolescent years, as we went through the puberty JET STREAM, we were eating my parents out of house and home. 6 popovers between the three of us was like giving us two peas a piece. We would eat most or all of these ourselves if we had our way.

So we had a tradition that was very glorious and culturally refined – we would spit on our popovers!

YES! I said we SPIT ON OUR POPOVERS! Because spit was the death sentence – there was no traversing that great expanse. There was no triple dog dare or any other device that would be apropos for said occasion. If a brother spit on any food item in the house, it was his, no questions. Because even if one were to swallow their pride and swallow the spit-upon goodie, they would be cursed by the owner of that spit from that point forward – “You ate that with his spit! Now his spit is in you! Ha Ha Haaaaa!”

Next blog, I will tell you what this could possibly have to do with BUILDING LASTING FRIENDSHIPS that last both NOW, and LATER! And we will discuss some of the reasons why some people only use their current friends for NOW, but never connect again with those friends LATER.