Tootsie Rolls

I had a longer post planned for today, but it will have to wait. While I was out front weeding and picking up trash from the high winds we had in the recent storm, I found this tootsie roll wrapper. It reminded me of one of our classic family stories.

At that time, we did our grocery shopping in three week marathons. We went to three different stores: a regular grocery store, Trader Joe's (at that time, they were just a local store - now you probably all know what they are), and a bulk type store. At the bulk store, one of the boys, with his own money (because I would never buy it for him) bought a huge package of tootsie rolls. Huge, maybe two pounds of them. Ugh.

When we got home, we relayed all the grocery bags to the table and the kitchen floor. For the next half hour or so I worked to find places for all the too big bags and multiples of everything. The kids had scattered.

From the boys' bedroom, I hear, "Mom, I have a stomach ache." I walked back to the bedroom. On the top bunk, he sat next to a pile - no, a foot high mountain, of empty tootsie roll wrappers. I was speechless. All the wrappers were scrunched and empty. There was no way he could have eaten all of those. It had only been a few minutes. But he held his stomach and groaned.

I don't remember exactly what happened next. Whether I said anything, or just stood there dazed, I'm not sure. Laughter came from the other room, and they all came in. He grinned and showed me a zip-lock bag of all the unwrapped tootsie rolls. While I was busy in the kitchen, they had all quietly worked together to unwrap them and make the paper mountain. They thought it was hysterical. Yes, it was funny. In hindsight. And I didn't have to make him throw it all up. Which might have served him right. Instead, we all laughed, enjoyed the joke on mom, and shared a few tootsie rolls.

He has a son of his own, now. And I just chuckle.