Dear Corner Store with the Jars of Nickel Candy,
I get why you didn’t like us (or I guess more specifically your owners didn’t like us, though it felt like you yourself didn’t want us there, Corner Store) because we were hordes of sugar-mad middle schoolers ravaging your jars for handfuls of bazooka gum and sugar daddys and bonkers and necco wafers under the watchful, hateful eyes of the old person behind the counter while our school bags waited for us by the door. We were pushy and probably rude and probably a lot of kids tried stealing (though not me).
What I guess I thought you should know, Corner Store, was that we were so awful because we were high on our power. Going to middle school, a fistful of change smelling like how the monkey bars used to make our hands smell – but we were too old now for monkey bars. We had a few cents and the freedom to go into a store and spend it – and we wanted to spend it on cheap, sticky candy and do so even though we knew that the shopkeeper hated it and our parents weren’t too thrilled about it either. Independence!
It felt so grownup to me, shopping your wares, Corner Store. There was something so urban about you and old-timey too. I imagined I was my dad, running to the store for Grandma in 1950’s Boston. And later, when I read A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, you were Cheap Charlie’s and Gimpy’s in one.
Thanks for all the candy,
-e.