Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Irresistibility

Don't worry; this doesn't mean the Yoki series has been discontinued. It's just a blip in my plan.

Yesterday, I was watching Is. in the late afternoon. Ph. had an away soccer match and so needed a ride to the school around 4 p.m.; D. was off on an errand. I was sapped out, dragging. I've been off caffeine since mid-August, but yesterday I suffered an ever so slight hankering and succumbed to it, stopping off at the local quick mart for a cold Dr. Pepper. Is. asked, where are we going? I said, inside for a soda. She said, huh? And I said a soda, a pop. Growing up in Michigan, it was always "pop." Is. thought I was talking about a "fruit pop"--the name she uses somewhat interchangeably for 100% juice popsicles and also for lollipops or suckers, which I've learned lately are shoved in kids faces at every turn from the physician to the post office (today at the post office in Fayetteville, a chocolate Dum-Dum). It's constant.

Anyway, the two of us went into the mart, and, of course, all of the candy was lined up at Is.'s eye level, a galleria of pops and things. She picked out a pomegranate (?) Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop, and we were out the door again, me with my soda and Is. with the candy. Indulged and temporarily satisfied.

The deal with the pop was that she had to eat a decent dinner before she could have it. No problemo, said the look she gave me. And she did so, happily working through the nutritional foodstuff before reminding me that the junk was all-the-while hailing her.

And then we had a conversation about how, when I was a kid, the Country Corner at the intersection of Remus and Winn Roads would redeem Tootsie Roll wrappers if they had a star on them. Seems like I ate quite a few of those.

I also told Is. about the commercial with the dippy kid who sought out a partner for his "how many licks?" research study: the one where the turtle admits his inability to resist devouring the thing before completing the investigation and then passes the kid off to the overconfident and disastrously lazy owl who gives it two licks before crunching down on the thing. Fade to shrinking fruit pops with voiceover: "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop? The world may never know." Is. was far more interested in hearing about the boy, the turtle, and the owl, than in hearing me describe that commercial as my first exposure to flawed research (that sort of sham inquiry that made it seem like the owl already knew the answer he would give and instead performed the part only so he could consume the object of inquiry, take it as his own, and so on).

Later, we checked it out on YouTube.

No shortage of innuendos here about research ethics and consuming inquiry (either way: of too much fondness for the objects or of destructive partnerships), but suffice it to say that Is. did not ask me what the answer was (how should I know?) and neither did I let on whether I thought the question from the commercial was any good in the first place.

Posted by Derek Mueller at September 24, 2008 10:59 PM to Unspecified