Jumping frogs, Candy Corn and Waldorf Children

My boss hired a middle-aged woman to paint a fluorescent mural outside of our store. We are located beneath the sidewalk in a cramped space that was once a Wine Cellar:the chalk-board sign and helium balloons fail to draw attention to the fact that we do indeed exist, therefore this woman crouches in front of the building each day to paint a scene of blue skies, bubbles, a picket fence, and a vibrant red door, in hopes of attracting (if not blinding) walkers.

Every time this woman comes, she brings her daughter: a highly energized eleven year old who insists on helping us while her mother paints.

She is a Waldorf child. When being warned of this the first time, I did not know what "Waldorf" meant: I thought it was a physical ailment--come to find it was not an ailment at all, but rather a higher form of education, emphasizing hands-on experiences and morbid sing-a-longs.



"What should I do now?" "What do you want me to do?"
She followed me at the hip, repeating these questions until I set down a twenty-pound box of Candy Corn, instructing her to make "Dollar Bags" and tie them off with orange and black ribbon. This possibly violated every child labor law in the country, yet kept her occupied as she sang a creepish song about a foolish frog that jumped into traffic and died. She learned that one at school.

Her eager curiosity turned to pushiness. She was now following me around the store, directing "what bins I should fill", where I should rearrange jars, and what spots on the floor needed a good sweeping. When you find yourself growing intimidated by an eleven year old's structural commands, you come to realize how ridiculous your job is.

Every time she dropped a piece of candy, she asked what she should do with it.
"Eat it or throw it away," was my response, and, after catching onto this quickly, she persisted on dropping candy pellets until her teeth developed a coat of colorful dyes.

Every time a customer came in, I felt a bit foolish, if not criminal, as the underage child stood behind the register, telling the customer what to do in "our" store. When the store fell silent, she continued to sing again. About the same frog.

At the end of the night, we began to clean the store together. She picked up (and ate) the miscellaneous dropped pieces of candy as I folded boxes, my ears painfully raw due to the constant stream of questions and haunting amphibians.

When she had finished collecting the spare candy, I asked her to wash dishes while I counted out the register. For the first time in the entire night, she stopped completely, looking up at me with a heavy fear in her eyes: "I cant." she replied, somewhat bashfully. "I am afraid of dishes. I am afraid my hand will fall down the drain."

Dealing Candy to Minors

Candy has always been one of my guiltless pleasures, and after thrusting myself into the downtown candy-store in search of a job, the owner finally agreed to hire me.
I always liked candy-store clerks: they greeted me with a toothy grin resembling mint chicklets, and never commented on the questionable amount of Bottlecaps I planned on funneling into my mouth in one night. They never antagonized me for choosing the hideous candies like Jujy-Fruits or Anise Bears. They never told me to slow down on the sugar before my teeth fell out.
I imagined the children would view me the same way I viewed the candy-store clerks of my childhood: the rosy-cheeked woman with the pinched waist. The woman mothers envied simply because their children liked her more than them...Though things have changed. While working in a candy store during the "new parenting" boom, sugar is viewed as the devil's chew toy, and I do not see myself as an angelic figure at all, but rather a skantily dressed dealer selling Oxycotion to minors on the playground.

I watch parents enter the Candy Store with pained expressions on their faces, gripping nervously at the childrens' shirt sleeves while spewing commands to make this trip a "safe" trip indeed:
"You can have ONE gummy worm, Sharon. I said ONE."
"Do you know how much SUGAR is in a single SERVING of those?"
"Candy CIGARETTES?! Jesus, What message do THESE sell?!" (this comment is often accompanied with an offended glare in my direction, as if I've laced the entire "vintage candy" table with hints of tobacco and pornographic artwork.)

When these sugar-fearing parents arrive, I hear a chained repetition of the words"Carbohydrates" "Calories" and "Cavities": the three "C"s that no child took into consideration ten years ago while buying handfulls of Charleston Chews at the corner gas station.