The Red Candy is the Best

There's a lot of candy out there in the world. Some people like orange slices but not me. Some like lemon drops but you can keep them. For me, it's all about the reds. I love red candy whether the flavor is cherry, strawberry, or some other red flavor. Usually candy comes in variety packaging. One example is "Five Flavors Lifesavers." Other examples are Starbursts, gummy bears, jelly beans, gummy worms, and gumdrops.

I like gummy or sour candy when I'm driving. I pack loose candy into a big baggie that I call my road candy. It doesn't melt like chocolate does and the sweet flavors and chewiness keep me awake and alert. I love the red flavors and like the purple and blue flavors. But I don't care much for the lemon and lime flavors and I really dislike the orange flavors. So as I drive down the road, munching periodically on my road candy, I try to avoid the oranges. I usually eat the yellows and greens together to mix their flavors. When I get to the end of the bag, there's a bag full of orange flavored candy.

When I buy bags of candy to go into my road candy bag, I look for bags with minimal amounts of orange candy. With gummy worms, I bite off and eat the green half and leave the bitten orange half. I know that sounds crazy but it's what I do.

I've disliked orange flavored anything for as long as I can remember. I remember my siblings drinking Orange Tang in the 60s or 70s and me thinking they were crazy. I remember not wanting to ever take Aspirin because all we had was orange flavored Bayer baby aspirin.

I really dislike even the smell of oranges. When I walk into a room where someone is peeling an orange, I walk right back out again. I don't know how I survived cutting oranges for my kids' lunches but somehow I managed.

Every once in a while, I get lucky and find my very favorite candy of all. Starburst jelly beans makes a seasonal flavor named "FaveREDs" that come out in select stores at Easter time. They're usually hard to find so when I find them, I always get a bag and sometimes get two bags. FaveREDs have cherry, strawberry, and watermelon flavors only. That's my kind of candy.

Yesterday I was running a few errands and found them in the neighborhood CVS Pharmacy. There were only a few bags left so I bought two. I know one will be gone before Easter is over since I've eaten about a third of the bag already. The real question is whether I can set the other bag aside until my next big road trip this summer. I hope that I can but I don't know if I have that much willpower. But at least for now, I've got my red candy fix!