Up the Tree

When I was young, I used to love Muenster cheese, because I thought it was called Monster cheese. I used to imagine that the yellow-orange outer coating was part of it’s monster quality. I imagined Frankenstein eating loads with the wolf man.

*When I found out it wasn’t called Monster cheese I was devistated.*

The funniest part about growing up in Manhattan is that many things people outside deeply urban areas experience, I find exotic. As people coming to the _big city_ enjoy rides in elevators, because they seem exotic if you don’t ride them daily… when you ride them daily it becomes standard.

I like malls.

They’re kind of exciting. Huge monstrosities, built to capture the senses, entice the appetite, and empty the purse. It is the cultural counterpart of the casinos in Vegas. A world where time stops and direction becomes skewed.

Being that my favorite activity is people watching, malls are like _methamphetamines_ for the senses. A smorgasbord of bad hair and tasteless teens, roving like packs of hideously dressed wolves searching for other packs of teens. They swarm about food-courts, talking to each other, passing nervous glances to the other opposite sex groups across the fod-court hugging closely to a Cinnabon.

It eventually becomes overwhelming. The visual pollution, while intoxicating, begins to overwhelm the senses. It begins with a sale sign in the wrong shade red and then the garish reality of your surroundings begins, much like too much sugar, to eat away at you sanity.

It’s a uniquely American experience. Like pecan pie, Fluff, Peanut Chews, and conformity. A representation of truth and the american dream, all laid out for purchase.

We accept Mastercard and Visa.

I am a sweet person. That is, I love sweet foods. They call out to from shop windows, whispering their quiet descent to my, somewhat resolute, self-control

h4. I Love Sweets.

My mother and father were not sweets people. Rarely, would I find anything resembling junk-food within the confines of my parent’s apartment. The closest thing to a snack in my childhood was a plain rice cake, because it held no purpose outside the peckish impulses both my my sister and I expressed. Simply, we were Cherios(TM) children; that all too common class of New York City children born into upper-middle class liberal families that had read Dr. Spock and enjoyed MacNeil/Lehrer News hour.

We were the tragically un-hip children in school. My younger sister and I were destined never to be popular donned in our sensible L.L. Bean jackets and non-name-brand shoes. We were never the envy of other kids.

bq. “I am not going to get you those [expensive] shoes,” my mother used to say in her staccato german accent “you will out grow them in a month.”

She was right of course, we would have out-grown them too quickly to ever rationalize spending hard earned money on plastic and leather. No child of 10 should wear $50 shoes, but back then it was of little comfort that I would dress in shoes that kids in communist china would have considered “so last year.”

h4. I had Velcro shoes before it was remotely cool to have Velcro shoes.

My sister and I were born to practical parents. Parents who knew the value of a dollar and would never frivolously spend money on such extravagances as expensive shoes or yummy treats. Bet we had a secret fund that we would use to purchase our contraband goodies. It was the gravy-train, known to most inner-city children of non-legal working age as allowance. This magical pot of gold would surface every week and offer a child a temporary spending spree of delectable sweets. This sugar trust-fund should have, theoretically, last a week, but I as weak and left to my own devices could devour a 1 lb. bag of Twizzlers in one sitting.

h4. I had a problem.

For all intents and purpose, I should have diabetes with the amount of sugar I have ingested in my lifetime. This severe addiction lasted well into my teens until, thanks to a hiatus in my deforming acne, I found girls far more intriguing. I had to loose the pudge and swore of candy and took up a healthier diet.

I’m still obsessed with sweets today and regularly have to remove a bag of Twizzlers from my basket at checkout at Duane Read on my purchase of shampoo. They just seem so inviting, small little glossy bags of goodness and I break easy. I am, however, getting better. I almost completely stopped going to CVS after Halloween to buy discounted Cadbury Cream Eggs. I hardly ever buy the seasonal Hershey’s Kisses after Christmas anymore.

I am a reformed candiholic, but it’s still hard, because once I break my candy seal, as I’ve said to many invitations to a chocolate morsel “you’ll find me in the middle of the night, in the closet, with a flashlight, a mouth covered in chocolate and a bag of snickers bars.”

h4. …and unfortunately it’s all true.