Lemon Drops and Dentist Bills

When I was younger, back when all the summers would blend together, my father took me to an old looking five-and-dime store- packed with cheap candies and little trinkets that would only last the ride home. Back then my favorite candies were anything lemon flavored, and I spent all my time in the candy store gathering up little boxes and individually wrapped candies that were decorated with bright yellow lemons.
After reporting in from my Candy Safari, my father gave me a few dollars and told me to go pay by myself (this being back when I needed independence to be taught to me). After loading up all my joy onto the counter with a big grin on my face I asked the man at the counter, an old man who had clearly been working here for many years, but who still had a genuine smile, how much it would cost. The man replied in a playful tone:
It’ll cost your family a few thousand in dental bills!
The man laughed, a bit too loud, looking to my father to see if he heard the joke. My father, however, was lucky enough to escape the over practiced humor of the gentle old man, which left me to bring a fake smile to my face, hoping that the old man wouldn’t feel alone in his joke. Eventually the old man stopped laughing, sighed to himself as if remembering a million cavities he had when he was my age, and told me he would only charge me a buck for the lot.
On the car ride home, I hesitated to dive into my bag of goodies; I didn’t like the idea of my candy causing anything more than pure pleasure in my mouth in my mouth. After a minute of contemplation, remembering my last dentist visit when they drilled holes in two of my back teeth for a filling, I decided to eat just one piece of candy, just to get a taste, but to keep the cavities at bay
By the time I finished the first piece, my hand was already reaching for a second before my mind could tell it otherwise. After that a third, then a fourth, by the time we reached home the bag was empty and my stomach hurt. My ill feeling left me to never want to think about candy again, but that feeling would fade before the day was through.
The next day my mother surprised me with a box of lemonheads she picked up on her way from work. The day after that my friend brought in cake for his birthday. The weekend following contained Holloween night.
No matter how sick I felt, I would always get all the sugar I could, no matter how many cavities I got. The best part was, the sugar never stopped tasting good.

Bright Lights and Colourful Bottles

When I was in highschool, when the summers all begin to have their own personality and memories, when all the summers started to have songs associated with them, when specific people and events claimed permanent parts of my memory, I began to become exposed to something that previously, as far as I was concerned, existed solely within the confines of television episodes and family parties.
Drinking for the first time was nothing too special, just me and another friend who had a little and then played video games- nothing spectacular to speak of. The times after that I had a little bit more, a little bit more, and a little bit more, and by the tenth or so time I was getting drunk with friends and hardly thinking twice of it.
I remember the first time I was in a liquor store- I felt like a child in a candy shop- I wanted to bring everything home with me so I could try all the flavours and collect the pretty bottles. I not only remember standing there in awe, but I distinctly remember what one of my friends (who had a fake) said to me while we were there. I had asked him how much a handle would cost me, and he replied:
Don’t worry about it man, it's on me. Friends gotta take care of friends sometimes.
I couldn't help but show a big grin on my face. I would thank him at least two dozen times that night as I drank the handle away. That handle would end up being the handle I drank from to get myself drunk alone for the first time. The handles after that weren’t free, but it was always worth the money.
I still remember the big bright lights coming down on all the colourful bottles whenever I drink, and as the extended sleepiness of drunkenness takes me over, I remember what a lovely thing it was to get something so wonderful for free.

Burning Nostrils and A Slip Of The Hand

Around the time I started drinking I started smoking. The two things almost always went hand-in-hand, at least where I come from. I still remember sitting in friends cars, or sitting in a friend's basement, being offered Strand X which came from location Y, which according to my company was better than Strand A from location B, which lead me to try to pretend like I knew what I was talking about: I would tell them I recently had Strand Z from location C. Like the intelligent folks they were, of course, they would tell me that Strand Z isn't real, or that Location C doesn't grow Strand Z, so I would just pretend to have misspoke and take another hit to forget my ignorance.
One night, as I layed on the floor, staring at the ceiling, I was offered something new. Something free of charge since it was my first one. Something that, at it's cheapest, was a few bucks at the gas station down the street.
My first cigarette stung like nothing else. It was different than smoking pot, and it hurt my nose like mad when I inhaled. My friend patted me on the back as I sat up to cough while he told me I would get used to it soon. When I told him I wasn’t sure if there would be a soon for me smoking cigarettes he shrugged his shoulders and told me to smoke the rest of the one in my hand. That night I smoked two on my own and peaced three more. My mother wouldn’t find a hole in my shirt from a cigarette burn until college, and when I asked my buddy if I could buy the rest of his pack off of him that night he told me there was only a few left, and that I could just take the rest. He told me, in a deep voice meant to mock our parents:
Just don’t smoke the rest all at once, these things will kill ya, ya know!.
We both laughed and I began to pack another bowl. As I did so, the cigarette left in my mouth began to set my nostrils on fire again, causing me to open my mouth, dropping my cigarette. It fell onto my hand, leaving a burn on the base of my thumb, making me drop the bowl to the ground. My friend picked up the bowl and handed me back my cigarette which he relit. He said not to worry about it and told me he had done the same before. He looked down at my hand and gave it a sideways glance, then he looked up and said:
That’s so weird man, that burn looks like a lemon.
I told him he was high and went to was off my hand in the bathroom sink. It stung like crazy. 

A New Dentist and Sour Candy

They say marijuana isn't a gateway drug, and I agree. I agree fully, but I do believe that it opens up a person's curiosity.
I never planned on doing it more than once, and I never got the chance to do it even then, but in the summer between my junior and senior year of highschool I had purchased whatever it is you call 50 dollars worth of cocaine.
Driving while intoxicated was a big no-no even for the more edged out types, but driving while stoned was more common than you would think. My problem that night wasn't even reaction time, it was speeding- I got lost in the air on my face from the open window and ended up doing 55 in a residential.
When the cop asked me to step out of my vehicle, I assume on the count of the smell radiating from me and the car, I did my best to remain calm and tried not to finger the package filled with powder in my pocket as I walked to the curb. I was asked to spread my legs and I was patted down kindly, but the hands stopped and began to handle what was in my pocket as soon as he got to my shorts. I was asked to remove all the items I had on my person, which, at the time, felt like the most dramatic scene out of the movie that is my life. When the cop looked at what I had pulled out, he turned to his partner and said:
Hey Steven, you'll never guess what this kids got in his pocketses.
I was tried as an adult- I had turned 18 just a few weeks before, and wound up with 4 years in prison. Locked up, most days didn’t feel real, everything feels extremely distant like a dream you should have woken up from by now, and the days that do feel real aren't exactly good days. I made a friend or two during my time, but the good ones usually weren't sentenced for very long. My cellmate, who deserves no name, but only his number: 3-3-something-something-something-9-9, offered me a candy during my first day in prison and I foolishly tried to grasp it from his hand thinking it was free. Instead, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me in hard, whispering in my ear:
It's gonna cost ya.
He called it a teeth whitening- I already didn't like the dentist, I had a lot of bad memories of getting fillings, but I’d choose the dentist over his version of a whitening any day. He'd always give me a little lemon candy afterwards, just to remind me he owned me.
Lemon candy never tasted sweet again.

Shaky Hands and Old Memories

I sit here now, with all the days forming together, with shaky hands and a shaky mind, speaking to you, my nephew, with last hopes of passing on my mistakes to another so that they can be learned second hand.
Years from now, hopefully, I will lay in a casket, safe and sound, and know that my mistakes were not a complete waste of my life- atleast someone, and if you pass on my stories, someones, can learn from my faults.
The cost of a lemon drop, to the cost of more bitter luxuries are hardly paid by the price tag stuck on them. The cost of your actions, both well intended and otherwise, have a charge well beyond a young man's understanding.
Do you wish you could undo some of the things you did?
There was a time in which I sent time wishing I had done things differently, but to waste time thinking about the past is to waste the future, and I figure I’ve pissed away enough of the past, I shouldn’t burn away the future.
Time past, a minute or two perhaps, as I waited for another question to be asked, but no such thing happened- he either didn’t care or didn't know what to ask. I never have liked too much silence, even once I settled down.
I told him that mistakes were okay, but to learn from them quickly is wise. He nodded begrudgingly, probably wishing I would stop talking so I can do whatever people do at such a young age nowadays.
I let him go, he listened for long enough and I was beginning to feel bad. I hope he learned from what I told him. If he at least remembered the stories later on in his life, I think they could do him some good. Optimistically, I let him leave.
I would find out, six years from now, that he had been shot dead- the reasons for which would be unknown, whether a personal attack or a random act of violence. The only thing to be found in his pockets at the scene was a box of lemon candies. I cried would cry when I heard the news, wondering if that's all he remembered from what I had told him.