Candy Terrorists

The sheriff’s car pulled up on the side of the road, lights flashing and siren wailing, beneath the railroad overpass. Spiced gumdrop candies lined the road, evenly spaced from each other in a ten foot by ten foot square. Two small hooded figures could be seen ducking down in the gravel next to the tracks, silhouetted against the burnished and shimmering summer sky above the road. The sheriff stepped out of his vehicle with dispatch radio in hand, prepared to apprehend the perpetrators responsible for such heinous domestic mayhem. “All right, boys, come on down,” he squawked through his loudspeaker to them, and they reluctantly scrambled down the embankment, knowing resistance was futile, the law would catch up with them one day. He escorted them into the back of his patrol car and delivered them home to their mortified parents. Yes, the candy terrorists, reported by a passing motorist to the sheriff’s office as “two boys throwing rocks at cars” were apprehended and the public safety was upheld, only discovering afterward that the two were me and my best friend, Val, bored on a summer’s day and making color patterns from above with a bag of candy from the local IGA. The worst chastisement I received that day? My indignance at being mistaken for a boy.