Sundries

When I was younger, my parents would always take my brother and me on these long roadtrips to Disney World. In hindsight, it only takes like three hours to get to Disney from Miami, but I think time passes slower when you're younger--I remember the whole no eating/drinking for thirty minutes after getting a fluoride treatment at the dentist was interminable.

So invariably, on one of these roadtrips. we would stop at some random gas-up rest stop, and we'd find a big, garish, Orange-decorated sign advertising "Sundries." If you've ever taken a trip through the Sunshine State, Florida being it's whacked-out, hurricaned, can't-vote state of worship to the citrus fruit, you'll find these odd little candies, shaped like flat half-slices of oranges and grapefruits. I think at some point, etymology be damned, I decided that those candies were "sundries"--candies which looked like citrus fruits dried in the sun.

To this day, I can't hear or see the word sundries without picturing those candies, which oddly were never all that appetizing to this sugar-fiend.