Flashback Friday - Gumdrops

Today's post is brought to you by my most excellent coworker, yes, the very one I have been complaining about lately. Let me lay out the inspiration for you.

The context: I am sitting at work pretending to be busy on my computer, the radio is on the oldies station like always, and The Whistler is over by his scales doing what he does over there.

The song: "She Can't Find Her Keys" by Paul Petersen (YouTube)

In one of the verses, the lady in question pulls out some gumdrops from her purse, and the following conversation ensues:

Whistler: GUMDROPS??!!!! Wow, that's old-fashioned, do people even eat gumdrops at all any more??

Me: Well, it is the oldies station, after all...

Whistler: *chuckle* Hehe, yeah, that's true.. *hem, haw* (cue condescending "you probably have never heard of gumdrops before" tone) Gumdrops, you know, those are kind of like gummy worms.

Me: ... (thinking, did he REALLY just say that??? I'm 30 years old, not 12, for the love of all things holy...)

So today the topic is gumdrops, and how I actually DO know what they are, I have eaten them before, and in fact, I have a little story of a memory involving gumdrops that makes me chuckle. (Now there's a flashback, anyone remember Chuckles? They were kind of like gumdrops..)

Back when I was just a little dragoness in school, I was in science class and we were learning about molecules. And the teacher passes out little cups of gumdrops and some toothpicks to each student. We spent the rest of the class happily stabbing the poor abused gumdrops with toothpicks, as each different color represented a different type of atom. So one green one and two white ones went together to make a water molecule, you get the idea.

Once I got to college, I discovered that they make plastic modeling kits for students to use, which were fun in their own right. But I'll never forget that first lesson in molecules, and how tasty they were when class was over!

And for the record, in my own personally humble opinion, gumdrops are in no way like gummy worms.