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Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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5:58 p.m. - 2005-06-01
When I was in high school we called Smarties™ 'happy pills'. It was impossible not to smile when eating Smarties. Everything about them was fun. The crinkly wrapper. The way they were lined up in a tidy cylinder. The bright Easter colors. The sweet-tart taste. Best of all the concave disc shape was perfect for getting them to stick on your tongue. Part spit/part suction we'd stick a Smartie on the tip and waggle our candy bedecked tongues at each other and laugh. Yep, Smarties were happy pills. Imagine. All that joy from some cellophane, citric acid and high fructose corn syrup. Another thing that always made us laugh were smoke bubbles. There is an art to blowing smoke bubbles. An art made all the more enjoyable because it was stupid. There was a sincere pleasure in mastering a totally useless skill. (Never once on my resume have I listed being able to fill a soap bubble with cigarette smoke as a selling point to my value as a potential employee.) We would get a few of them aloft and chase those cloudy swirling bubbles asking in our best Glinda voices, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" And just about die laughing. The joke never went stale. Sounds odd unless you know that I was continuously stoned from 1977 thru 1981. "Ahh…now we see. Panama Red meets The Wizard of Oz, okay." The worst insult my sisters and I could sling at each other was to call someone 'a cow with shoes'. There was no insult more dire, no slur more apt to get you slapped. Yet inevitably the siblings not involved in the dispute would crack up over 'cow with shoes'. Thus causing the combatants to leave off their fight and attack the laughers. After a few choice smacks and some shouting, someone would say it again. Whereupon we'd ALL crack up over 'cow with shoes' and then go to the store for some Smarties™. That's all I have to say right now. ~LA Today's Pick: 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' by Jaan Kenbrovin
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