October 22, 2023 by Amy
Would you eat this?
The answer is no. Trust me.
I mean, there are a lot of things out there that people won’t even try. Sushi. Liver. Brain sandwich. Rocky Mountain oysters. Personally, the taste of coconut makes me want to immediately vomit. Zoe can’t stand mushrooms. M despises raw tomatoes. I’m not talking about any of this. These are what I would call normal aversions.
The “food” in question, dear readers, is gummies shaped like teeth. In gums. This:
Who the fuck said, “You know, you’ve got your adorable gummy bears, and someone made gummy worms, but that’s just not disgusting enough.”
It’s not like there’s a shortage of gummy shapes available. Besides the popular bears and worms, there are also fruit-shaped gummies (which is the only one that actually makes sense), rings, and fish (mainly of the Swedish variety). Which makes one wonder why in the hell we accepted gummy-shaped fish in the first place. Swedish Fish have been around in the United States since the late 1950s, well before I was born, so I have never questioned it. I doubt you have, either.
Today’s grocery store find, though, now has me doubting all manner of gummy candies. If you can find gummy body parts, what else is there? A quick Google search tells me you can buy (and eat) gummy sharks, mermaid tails, LEGO blocks, cocktails, sand sharks (because those are different from the plain ol’ gummy sharks?), turtles, butterflies, unicorns, cupcakes, flamingos, pretzels, soda bottles, pigs, and fast food. That’s right, you can buy candy that is shaped like one kind of food but tastes like something else entirely. That’s just a mindfuck.
I don’t get it. Are there people out there saying, “I like gummy bears, but I’m sick to death of this stupid bear shape. Down with bears! What else can we eat?”
I saw this lone container of gummy jaws on the shelf this afternoon and almost tossed my cookies right there in the checkout lane. M was grabbing a last-minute bag of candy corn pumpkins for Z in the seasonal decor aisle and I lingered at the shelf that lines the shoppers up for checkout, waiting for him to return. The line moved, and I slowly edged forward, just enough to keep the people behind me from honking. I had to show him but there’s no way I was poisoning my cart with that. He came back, questioning whether he got the right bag, and I waved him off. “Yeah yeah it’s fine. Look at this! It’s so disgusting!”
He was appropriately horrified and made a suitable retching noise. So we did what we always do when we find something nasty. We took a picture and, between fits of giggles, texted it to our daughter.
Zoe usually responds to our questionable texts with pictures like this:
This time, though, she surprised us. “Oh my god. Can you get those? That looks disgusting but I really wanna try it.” We were now well past the denture gummies so M popped back down and snagged them before any other crazy person could pick them up. I am berating myself for not paying attention to how the other shoppers reacted to a grown-ass man desperately grabbing for a small plastic container of gummy teeth and gums.
Friends, the only thing more disgusting than a container of gummy dentures is watching someone—your only child, no less—gleefully pop one into her mouth. For the second time that day, I nearly threw up. She says they taste just like regular gummy bears. My brain cannot comprehend this. I can’t associate the delicious sugary goo of sweet little gummy bears with miniature versions of my Gramps’ false chompers.
Tonight, I washed out the big candy jar and filled it with individually wrapped caramel cubes. I washed the small candy jar and stocked it with the candy corn pumpkins. M, my hero, stuck the container of the World’s Most Disgusting Gummies in the pantry. It’s right there in the front so I still have to face it every time I fetch ingredients, but I’d rather have it there than lurking in the back for months, only to reappear in May and make me cringe all over again.
I used to always say, “I’ll try anything once.” Hell, I even try coconut every couple of years, just to see if I grew out of my aversion and can enjoy such delicacies as pina coladas and really good carrot cake. I can no longer say this. Turns out there’s exactly one thing that I will never, ever put in my mouth. And that’s a smaller version of my mouth.
Today’s header image is of some lovely daisies that I found on this morning’s walk. I didn’t want to shock the crap out of you by just jumping into the edible dentures. You’re welcome.
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