The Everlasting Gobstopper Philosophy
So, here's a trip down memory lane. Does anyone remember their favorite candies from their childhood? I was thinking the other day about the Marathon candy bar, a flat, braidlike stick of chocolate-covered caramel heaven, and that got me thinking about the other goodies from my youth that I don't see anymore.Remember Bottle Caps? Wacky Wafers? Pop Rocks? OK, I'm probably showing my age now.
I even remember candy cigarettes. Not the chocolate ones, but the white crunchy ones that had some kind of powder around them which we would blow so it looked like we were actually smoking. My dad was a smoker, so it was no big deal to "smoke" in my house. How bizarre.All this sweet nostalgia got me thinking about the everlasting gobstopper. Remember those big jawbreakers that started out one color and then changed to a different color and flavor the more you sucked on them? At the center was a sweet tart kind of core which you could get to if you were patient enough to keep licking the outside.
As I read Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, I kept thinking about the everlasting gobstopper. Tolle tells us that our ego is outside ourselves - it is not who we really are at the core. When we can stop identifying ourselves as our ego, we will start to see that we really are all the same - at that core.
So my master mind groups have been talking about how our ego is all those layers of different colors and flavors we have put on the outside of our sweet center. That's not really who we are. At our core we are all connected - we are all the same.
So imagine my delight when I examined the cover of Peter Block's new book Community and saw that the dot on the i is a gobstopper!We really are all connected!
What do you remember from your youth? What might it be telling you today? Watch the signs ... they're everywhere!
posted by Jodee Bock @ 6:44 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Jodee,
My favorite are bottlecaps! I also remember those little wax pop bottles with the juice in the middle. Pop Rocks and loved the Marathon bar.
While I love the gobstopper analogy, I am a bit like Mr. Owl, wanting to chomp to the center of that Tootsie pop. Once you see the "center" in people and recognize that all of the layers are only their circumstance, their choices, that the "true" center is there, you want to chomp through all of the garbage and get to the center of things.
Do you remember MilKay pop or soda [whichever in your region]? I can remember walking to the corner store and there was a big white chest which resembles a chest freezer today, and we'd buy a bottle for a dime. Orange was my favorite flavor. The bottles were glass and there were bottle caps which you'd open on the side of the chest holding the bottles.
Yes, Brenda, that is so true! I, too, want to get to the heart, or the core, or the center of people right away!
Robyn: I don't remember the MilKay pop (we call it pop here in ND), but I do remember bottles of pop we used to get at my dad's lumber yard. The cooler was fake wood paneled, and you had to slide the bottles all the way through this maze that they hung from. My favorite was Nesbitt's orange which seemed to have stuff floating in it. Yum! Those were the days! Thanks for the walk down memory lane!
What a great question. Has me thinking. I remember the hot 64 Thunderbird...my favorite car...tells you I'm a grandma....and great grandma..
Nice blog thanks for stopping by mine.
Dorothy from grammology
remember to call your gram
www.grammology.com
I loved the Marathon bar. And Bar None. And Wacky Wafers (most Wonka candy, actually). Bottled pop in coolers was somehow better than anything you can get today, as well.
So much of that stuff is gone or different now, but one candy that still takes me back is the Charleston Chew. It's exactly the same as it was 25+ years ago. I like candy, if you couldn't tell. =)
Interesting book. I've been thinking about 'community' in a general sense (as it relates to the running crowd) since the marathon. There is such a sense of belonging that doesn't come through in other sports. I don't know if it's the shared emotions or the experience, but something about a group of people suffering and achieving a goal together creates a sense of community like nothing else.
Thanks for the post! Cheers.
Dorothy:
I love your blog! I just signed up to receive notification of your posts. Thanks for stopping by here and sharing your memories!
Eric:
I agree with your assessment of the community that's been built with the Marathon (both the candy bar, and the race!). I'd love to continue this dialogue and see how we can unite our state, which seems to be divided in half, both east/west and north/south. Block's book "Community" gives some great ideas for doing that - I'd love your input as a "northerner"!
I know this is so old that no one will ever see it, but...
So the Marathon Bar had the ruler on the back to prove it was a foot long, right? In the '70s when the economy wasn't great, rather than raising the price, they just shrunk the packaging and the ruler right along with it. Each inch was about three quarters of an inch.
Now there's an analogy for ya.
p.s. Wacky Wafers. Haven't thought of them in 30 years.
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