laughy taffy

When I was a kid I used to eat a lot of saltwater taffy. By the handfuls. I’m not exactly sure where my mother was during all this, but I would find myself covered in wrappers and be in utter delight. And with utter delight comes amazing and intuitive ideas, no?

I remember glancing at my waxy covered lap and at the same time watching my little brother play with play dough.

I had a thought.

Wrappers. Play dough. Wrappers. Play dough.

I could totally get away with it.  I think.

I grabbed the play dough to my brother’s demise, making sure I took at least 3 colors. That last color was a bit iffy. I think it combined 4 other colors and some spit. Ya. Definitely some spit.

Back to my genius idea.

I created tiny balls, flattened the edges and then wrapped each one in the leftover saltwater taffy wrappers. I compared them to the real deal. Oh my gosh. They looked for realz. I should get an award for my creativity.

I then took my newly acquired crop of candy and hit the playground.

5 cents each. 10 cents for the special spit swirl one.

It worked.

Then a four year old came back with a disgusted look on her face.

“I don’t like this! It tastes weird and salty” she said. “I want my quarter back.” (I decided in the middle of it all that I believed in inflation. 25 cents it is!)

“Sorry kid, you’re outta luck. We don’t do returns here. But I gotta tell ya, you may not be the smartest cookie on the planet...because gee whiz! It’s SALTwater taffy.”

Something tells me I was the biggest con artist in the history of playgrounds.

Can we still chalk that up to creativity?