Shelby met a blind lady last week at her achievement days meeting (kind of like girl scouts…) Shelby was enamored with this lady, her dog, the fact that she could not only read braille, but could type it. She talked about her new blind friend for at least an hour. As I listened to her talk about the really cool blind lady, I kept feeling little stabs of guilt. I stole from her once. Not her, directly, but still… probably the worst thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. Really, seriously, my entire life. Just so you know, I never did anything worse than what I’m about to confess. I have no other sins. Really. Yeah.

Back in the early days of clogging, before I was too old to be a clogger, before I realized clogging was making me totally uncool, my buds and I made the coolest discovery. At the pizza parlor down the street, in the lobby, there were vending machines. We were delighted. On our five minute break during class, we’d head a couple doors down, fish the quarters out of our pockets and load up on Skittles, Hot Tamales, or Mike & Ikes. Yum. Still, when I eat that candy, it brings me back to those days. That discovery alone made me very happy. But the next discovery was what made us positively giddy.

One of the machines, the Hot Tamale machine, had a "bug." See, you could put your quarter in the machine, turn it two clicks, get the Hot Tamales, then turn the knob back the other way and take your quarter out. FREE candy!!! Yippeee!!! For a few weeks, the handful of candy was enough and we’d run back and enjoy our spoils. But eventually, one handful was not enough.

Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well… eventually, our candy-junky selves discovered that we could insert the quarter, turn the knob two clicks, stick a finger into the machine, and drain the entire machine. Talk about nirvana. All the free Hot Tamales we could eat. We walked back to the clogging studio with our pockets so full we felt like ships with anchors overboard. We’d eat them not only through the rest of class, but through the entire week as well, emptying our supply just in time to reload at next week’s practice.

The fun ended when one of us noticed that the proceeds of the candy machines were going to benefit blind children. We were stealing from BLIND CHILDREN. I don’t remember who made the discovery or who put us on the guilt trip, but it’s a guilt trip I’ve stayed on my entire life. The fun stopped there. Yes. Because that is the worst thing I’ve ever done. And I never, ever try to take my quarters back if I use a candy machine now. Even ones that aren’t benefiting blind people. Yeah…never. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. Because that’s bad. Really, really bad. And not fun. No, not fun at all. This is a memory I look back to with pain, not with pleasure, because free candy… it’s not funny. Or yummy. Or awesome.

If I ever meet Shelby’s new blind friend, I’m giving her a box of Hot Tamales. I know it won’t make up for the wrongs I’ve done, but maybe it will make her happy like it once made me happy. And then, the guilt I’ve lived with for my horrible deed, the worst thing I’ve ever done, yes ever, so don’t ask if I’ve done anything bad because this is it, will be alleviated and I can feel guilty about something else really major and horrible. But there wouldn’t be anything, since this is the worst thing, so I guess I would be happy and living on the cloud at the end of a rainbow and riding on a unicorn that I got as a gift from a Care Bear. That would be pretty cool…