I don’t want any of you to think ill of me, so perhaps I should make something clear. I did not take my children INSIDE the liquor store. We merely parked the car in their lot and walked up to the liquor store and got orange pop out of the machine OUTSIDE of the liquor store.

Years ago, stores weren’t open all the time, as they are now. Most stores opened at nine, and it was about 7:45 when we arrived in the tiny town and I tried to buy breakfast drinks for my kids at the machines in front of the more respectable stores but they were all out of order so we hit the liquor store so I could get them to summer school by eight with something besides Pfeiffer’s doughnuts in their little tummies. Sigh.

And I know that orange pop isn’t the same as orange juice but. . . . you know how I kept using the word ‘desperate’ in my previous post? I was desperate. I sedated my conscience with the fact that it was at least orange-colored.

I know, too, that doughnuts for breakfast aren’t a good thing for a child. Too much sugar, and besides, it means that the adults don’t get as many.

Their usual breakfasts were very healthy. We didn’t have doughnuts often. (We couldn’t afford them, for one thing.) But this town used to have the best doughnut shop in the world. Honestly, people came from miles around to get them.

The main charm of Pfeiffer’s doughnuts, besides their incredible taste that puts KrispyKreme to shame, was the fact that it was a tiny local store, and it was safe to let little children go in there and choose a doughnut from behind the glass counter. (Like old people used to pick out penny candy when they were kids. ) I would park in front and wait in the car, give them their money, and let them go inside. (My mother did it for me when I was a child, and on back three generations before me.) It was one of the biggest treats you could give a tiny kid in this town. And to see a child’s face, coming OUT of Pfeiffer’s with a little white sack containing a doughnut, was something a picture could not have done justice to. And I’m not rationalizing that.

The orange pop, yes. The doughnut, yes. The PURCHASE of the doughnut, no. There’s a commercial here someplace but I’ve lost my frame of reference. . . . .

Something about rationalization. Well, there’s that.

While they were in class, I went to the grocery store and bought real food. And real orange juice.
I usually did pretty well, with the nutrition thing and all, when they were little. Honest, I did.

Not counting the occasional ‘cupcake day.’

Okay, they’re both in good health and their teeth are in great shape. The occasional silly-food day doesn’t hurt them, and it makes for a good memory down the line.

We’re down the line now. It’s impossible to comprehend.

I think it would have made a better story if I actually HAD taken them inside the liquor store. Yeah, and maybe bought each of them a bottle of tequila and let them take the worm for show-and-tell.

I might as well have. By the time my kids bragged all over the school about it, the whole town thinks I did, anyway.