Starburst Sucks Are Aptly Named

I had a fiery debate recently with some friends regarding veganism, the day before this there was a spat between two kids at work about whether coke or juice was a healthier option and finally I had a scare at a restaurant when a buddy with a nut allergy ingested some nuts. These three food related incidents got me thinking about the things we put into our bodies.

I like my body. I feel like we are fast friends. My body gets me through all sorts of situations and is yet to complain, no matter what I do to it. For example; last week I was rejoicing that I was only five minutes from the end of my shift and decided to let out a celebratory “woohoo” accompanied by a double fisted ‘yes’ gesture. You know the one, kind of like you’re doing a chin up without a bar, grasping at the air with both fists and pulling down hard and fast while ‘yes’ becomes ‘yesssssssssssssssss’. The only problem was, I had just been washing all of the steak knives and had placed them, blade side up, in a cutlery basket. This meant that instead of the celebratory gesture I intended it to be, I actually ended up stabbing myself in the elbow. The wound was a good centimetre deep. And no complaint from my body. It just puts up with the stupid shit I do, ah, my constant friend.

As was the case a little while ago when I accidentally ate something a little iffy.

A few months ago I stopped for petrol on the drive home and was offered a too-good-to-be-true offer of two Starburst Sucks lollipops for just forty cents which, of course, I snapped up immediately. Now, I love to eat in my car. It doesn’t have a cd player, any working windows, an interior light, an aerial, air conditioning and leaks when it rains, meaning it constantly smells like wet dog. So eating has to be the main form of entertainment on the forty minute drive home from work. I tucked right into the first of my two strawberry flavoured sweets and put the other in the centre console for the next return journey from work (or drive TO work at 5am if I was feeling crazy) and promptly forgot all about it.

Jump forward two weeks and on a hot, sticky afternoon I uncovered the remaining lollipop while crawling along in heavy traffic. What a coup. I said a silent thank you to past Maz for leaving it there for me and as we started moving I unwrapped it whacked it straight into my mouth. A few minutes later, it began to taste strange. I went to look at it just as traffic began to move again and noticed that it was flecked with black. I assumed I had simply bought one strawberry and one watermelon flavoured Starburst. That would explain the slightly more acrid taste of this second candy and the strange colouration. So I continued to happily suck away as I slowly made ground in the traffic. At the next lights I went to check the progress I was making on my lolly in order to ascertain how close I was to that point when it’s ok to chew the rest of it. Upon pulling the lollipop from my mouth I discovered that there were a few little black bits exposed and poking out of the walls of the lollipop. On even closer inspection they were ants. They had crawled up the hollow stick of the confection and had become entombed in the hard candy. Much like Han Solo frozen in his carbonite prison, their little legs reached forward lamenting their untimely deaths. So I decided the only way to honour the little suckers (you’re welcome for that delightful pun) was to finish eating that creepy crawly candy. And so I did just that. Whilst stopped amongst a hundred cars, I sat quietly and ate my lollipop of ants. I must have been the only person in at least a ten kilometre radius doing that exact thing.

I felt fine, not a trace of sickness was to be noted and I hadn’t even wasted my forty cents. Yep, that car ride home was a definite success.