So lemme tell you this. Jolly Ranchers are a great candy. There is not one flavor that tastes bad; they are all delicious, especially the green apple flavor. But that is kind of where I ran into some problems.

When I was in about third grade, I remember that we would get prizes for finishing books in a week from the library. Once a week our class would go and we would check out books. Typical stuff.

If you finished the book you read in that week, you would get to pick a prize. I always had a sweet tooth and chose the candy that Ms. Finger had that day. That was her name. She took some heat for it.

So on this particular day, I chose to pick out what was my favorite candy at the time: the green apple Jolly Rancher.

Now, me being a kid, and not really thinking too much about consequences, I decided to bite down on the Jolly Rancher. That is where my day went up in flames.

The delicious Jolly Rancher got stuck to my tooth and it would not get unstuck. I got a little freaked out because we were not allowed to eat our candy in class.

At this point, I am freaking out a little bit because I did not want to get in trouble. I could not go to class with this Jolly Rancher stuck to my tooth, or else I would get a “step.” That was what my school called getting in trouble. If you got so many, it would add up to a detention. Thinking back, what I did this day was definitely not worth it. I should have just taken the step.

So before my class had to go back to our classroom, I went to the bathroom to try to get this Jolly Rancher off my tooth. I thought maybe I could just pull it off my tooth. I mean, this thing was really stuck to my tooth.

So I pulled really hard to get the Jolly Rancher off my tooth, and then I heard a little crackle, I thought I was close. So I kept pulling and pulling, and then it came off. The big problem was that I pulled out my tooth with it. This tooth was not loose, and I was bleeding like I never could have imagined.

At this point, my time is running out. I had to get back and now my mouth was filled with blood and I was holding what was recently a rooted tooth in my hand. So then I had to deal with the blood gushing out of my mouth and also make it to class.

Well, to sum it up, I was late getting back to class and had to explain why I was bleeding the way I was. It was one of the worst days of third grade.

So my lesson to you is to not eat candy in class when you are not supposed to and to also not pull on a Jolly Rancher that is stuck to your tooth. At this point, you do not have an incoming adult tooth to fall back on. If you lose that, you are screwed.

Sean Hastings is a junior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].