I don’t know about you, but I loved sugar growing up as a kid!
My dad had no tolerance for sweets in the house, so when he suspected that my brother or I had been to the shop, he would search our pockets trying to catch us in the act, waiting for his victory!
My brother was a smart kid, he had a sweet tooth too, so when he came up with ‘project sugarlift’, I instantly grinned and agreed to it.
Project Sugarlift required me walking past dad and going out the back door to the shop, which I had to do extremely quietly and remember to put the snib on the door. I ran to the shop and talked to no one along the way, I bought a Twix, a KitKat, and a quarter of Bonbons, the white ones were our favourites and we always shared the Twix and KitKat. When I returned I did as I was told and closed the back door ever so gently not to alarm dad.
My brother would stand on the bed and watch out for me returning and once the door was closed he opened our bedroom window and lowered a rope with plastic bag attached, bloody genius right? I stood on my tip toes to look through the window to see if dad was nearby, the coast was clear, then I carefully put the sweets into the bag avoiding as much rustle as I could and yanked the rope once to confirm sweets were safe and ready, my brother then pulled up the rope in through the bedroom window. I took a deep breath and casually walked into the kitchen with my pockets empty, humming some tune (not suspicious at all!). When I walked through the living room, my hands were sweating, my heart was pounding like I had run 10 miles to the shop when it was only round the corner. I was never good at lying, so I was hoping my invisible cloak would let me slide out of the room unnoticed.
Dad lowered his newspaper and glared at me over his gold rimmed glasses. My tummy got ready for the interrogation. Instead his eyes just beamed over my body like infra-red light and when he found nothing he just lifted his newspaper and sighed. I couldn’t believe it, Im sure my eye brows were stuck to the ceiling in shock. I ran up those stairs 2 at a time to get to the bedroom for my fix – my brother looked guilty when I walked into the room, his cheeks were bulging, I couldn’t believe he had started eating without me!
We got away with ‘project sugarlift’ for years, we never told mum till dad died, in case she confiscated the bags! Maybe that explains why were so hyper!
Now, granny’s house was a different story, sweets in wrappers just sitting around in glass bowls waiting for your invitation to suck on them. Somehow not as much fun, but we still ate them!
Mum caught me one day in granny’s, licking my tiny finger then dipping it into sugar bowl and sucking my finger – what she said next haunted me for years.. “Jennifer you know, when you sleep at night, a big worm comes up your throat looking for that sugar” my smile suddenly turned downwards in disgust, I never ever did that again, but I figured worms couldn’t open Twix and KitKat packets so all was good there!
I started to learn about behaviours when I grew up and why we do the things we do, this was something that resonated with me and helped me reduce my chocolate & cake intake:
“we eat sugar, when we believe life is not sweet enough”
This helped me reflect back and notice my childhood was full of the troubles, uncertainy, fear and doubt - any wonder I ate sugar, it was sweetening things up for me in a bleak period. Now I choose to eat more fruit rather than sweets as my life is definitely sweeter.
