Crazy Grandma's candy dish

I think it may be safe to say that we go above and beyond with safety when it comes to our children. Not to downplay the importance of safety, but I raised a perfectly healthy and normal child even with several "Darwin award" type entrapments along the way to test her mettle. She chose correctly (and in some cases just got plain lucky) pretty much all of the time, thus resulting in a roboteen-like force ready to take on the world.

But I look around and see that her friends are so coddled they are not allowed to "live." They can't, for instance, go outside without sunblock, travel on the metro by themselves, smoke, or date gang members. And yet they're going to be sent off to college very soon...it will be like sending a butterfly off into the wild without letting its wings get strong through the process of breaking out of a cocoon!

And today parents are very wise to the safety of the products that go into their kids' mouths. When I was a kid it didn't really matter what we consumed. We sat in the back of cigarette smoke-filled cars (with the windows up, of course), unbuckled, eating Beefaroni from the can (it had the four food groups - pasta, sauce, meat, and aroni). Half the time we had a contact high from our parents' enormous bongs and - wait, excuse me for a second....(what? really? not everybody?). Uhhh...apparently that was just me. Anyway, today parents are savvy to these things, and are especially careful about choking and poisoning, to name a couple hazards. My generation's only defense from this was something called a Mr. Yuck sticker - I was always confused about this, however, as the sticker at my friends' homes was kind of green, but the one my parents would use was much different. True story* - one time I drank about 12 ounces of Drano because I was left home alone and was watching a Proctor and Gamble-sponsored cartoon called Mr. Drano and the Tastee Tastes, and the sticker my parents used - on Drano, bleach, kool-aid, bongs, whatever - looked like this.

But in this generation everything is labeled...even over-labeled. Dasani even comes with a "choking hazard" sticker. So in this environment, one really, really has to wonder...how on earth does this fly??? It's air freshener...that looks like candy! Have you seen these ads? WHAT is Renuzit doing? This is a society where entire neighborhoods have their peanut supplies confiscated if they are too close to a kindergarten. Where if one guy coughs while swallowing a bite of his spinach salad the whole produce industry collapses under E. coli fears. Where admitting in polite society that you let your kids eat raw cookie dough earns you the same scorn as if you had said that you had a confederate-flag tattoo on your ass (actually it's Alexander Stephens and on my perineum, but you probably don't know who or what that is).

But they're going to sell something that is likely poisonous, to be put out in the home (around the precious children!), in candy dishes, that looks like candy? Was their legal department on vacation the day this was approved? Doesn't anyone remember Hank Petchow?

* Not a true story