The Gum Drop Story

Now there came a time when Dorriejean realized she had to be careful what she wished for. She was very careful, by design. But several happenings made her realize that she had a certain knack for making wishes that came true.

The habit of serious wishing started when she worked in the Kitchens with Monica. She was put in charge of stripping the meat out of the freshly roasted chickens. During her third week, Dorriejean had started stock-piling wishbones. She remembered how when her mother was still alive, that had been the silliest part of those close dinners, pulling the wish bone while lingering over coffee and dirty plates no one cared about over the lively conversation. Thinking it slightly odd, but also oddly responsible, she began to accumulate the wish bones.  Her locker started to smell because she couldn’t find anyone to be on the other side of her wish pull and didn’t want to be accused of being selfish. She got fired and the bones stayed behind. Her boss remarked on her closing paperwork that he felt it was “mentally sick” that she had been saving all those calcium possibilities.

She found that now, she had a serious itch to scratch when it came to her new obsession.  So on the first star she saw at night, she would wish the same thing every night for a week. The important wishes, she would rotate, made sure to devote weeks sporadically to them in a zealous love affair. Her success rate was nil. Dorriejean just assumed that was  because she was still a beginner. But deep down, she felt extremely fulfilled, deciding that she had found what she was supposed to do in life.

With the slowly shade shift of dark black to mousie beige, Dorriejean lost her eyelashes. When she was 7, her cousin Nora had leaned over with the full, slow, falling-forward-first of her new breasts and daintily removed a single fallen soldier. Nora demanded of her;

“Make a wish and blow!” Just like with birthday candles!

Dorriejean remembered this on the bus soon after the wishbone incident. Clutching the want ads and day dreaming, her eyes suddenly focused on a small girl, maybe 4 or 5, kneeling on the bus seat and holding on to the bar to balance. She said something and the woman she was with leaned forward, offering her closed eyes to the young girl. the little girl wiped off the eyelash and offered it with slack-jawed focus. If she looked hard enough, maybe she would see the wish take on some kind of form, crow or storm cloud maybe. The woman blew away the lash and Dorriejean as well. She fell into a blown up sheet world and memories closed around her. It was instantaneous, and her hand flew immediately to her face, easily plucking the first three victims in the lash massacre that followed. She refused to wear false lashes. Surely those wishes didn’t count.

On her 17th birthday, there was a thunderstorm and she had red velvet cake. She was a little under the weather and merely wished for a cooling breeze to take away her headache and allow her to enjoy her cake. Mmm cake. Who doesn’t love cake? And suddenly the headache lifted with quick precision as the lightning flashed and the thunder more complained than anything else. Around her, people enjoyed their cake but Dorriejean was having a freak out inside. FUCK. of COURSE. And how sucky that the only method she got to work was one that could only occur once, once a fucking year?

But being a religious person, Dorriejean just looked at this as a positive, a time of preparation. She must be very careful if she had finally found her gift. And the paucity of opportunity to exercise such a gift meant she needed to be serious in her consideration of each and every wish.

This being said, she was an immature kind of girl and also only 17. Those of us over 17 know, 17 is nothing, 17 is a baby. So her next wish, after a year of cautious wonder and reverence, was decided to be a practice run. Something amazing, but not life changing. Something fun!

The same crowd gathered to celebrate her living another year. Minus Uncle Henry, who twisted his ankle on his latest cruise, and her other cousin, Danielle, who was at that very moment pushing out the newest Patrick in this over-Patrick-populated world. How little their absence bothered Dorriejean was obvious. She was seriously candle focused this year, and sat at the table in front of the cake, a pointed birthday hat atop her head, the elastic digging into the skin of her chin.  There long before anyone else even finished their cold cut sandwiches and greasy servings of squirming orzo salad, its halved cherry tomatoes like floating shark victims left to bob like bath toys.

Eventually the long BBQ lighter lit her candles and she made her long considered wish with a satisfied cocky, ugly, smirk of power inside her head. Whatever ironic, vengeful force decides to teach us such lessons must have been disgusted with the self-important twit who stood before the cake, again, red velvet, who was she kidding, always red velvet.

I wish for a never-ending supply of gum drops.

Despite the immediate disappointment of no instant gratification, Dorriejean did not despair but instead felt even more confident in her ability to do this thing she was surely meant to do. She rose from her plate of cake and made a roast beef sandwich instead, unconsciously pulling the child’s hat off her head and tossing it in the trash.

Two days later, she was in a photo booth on the boardwalk when she heard a sound like hail on the roof. Very big hail. But strangely enough she saw the gum drops start to build up right at her feet. before she knew it, her feet were utterly surrounded and laughing, she picked up a black one and ate it. Exquisite explosion of black licorice that made Dorriejean pause in digestion.

Then she noticed the gum drops heavy on her feet and she was buried close to the top of her calves. Trying to move her feet proved surprisingly impossible, a fact she barely got to register before she felt the first sugary soft thuds of more gum drops landing on her shoulders. Ok, she thought, perhaps I don’t know my own strength. Calling out also yielded no relief as her waist became spotted with multicolored happy toned gum drops with crystal sparkle goodness, so inviting under normal circumstances.

Dorriejean ate her favorite, a green one, to solve the case of dry mouth she got from calling out. The bustle of the arcade, the crash of the ocean and the pounding rock music from the Just Dance! video game quite annoyingly close to the photo booth made her rescue impossible.