The Annual Treat

Just once a year when the carnival is in town, I have a candied apple. They've been my favorite "fair" food since I was little. Something about the red glowiness of it, the crackly red coating like a king's grand robe over the lowly peasant apple. I walked over to the last hour of the carnival with my niece and her son, and we ate sugary sugar and then some sugar. The great-nephew was the winner of Most Glucose Intake: he ate a bag of pink and blue cotton candy that was a foot and a half tall, and washed it down with a Coke. And then he did push-ups. He's 16. He's like a frickin' colt running as fast as he can from one end of the meadow and then back again just because he can.