It's a rare thing to see candies in my cubicle. I don't have a sweet tooth. If I snack, I prefer something salty and crunchy. Miss Vicky's sea salt and malt vinegar chips, if possible. Crunchy little dried fishies will do in a pinch.

Today, I broke my habit and brought a bag of jelly beans. Some people are jelly bean snobs and go for the designer jelly beans with flavours like blueberry and piņa colada. I'm a jelly bean traditionalist: cherry red, minty green, lemony yellow, orangy orange, bubble gum pink, licorice black, and the unidentifiable white. What is white? It's not vanilla, is it?



Here's the thing, though: as I dig deeper into the bag, it seems as if the bitter licorice ones drift to the top. I like the licorice ones too, but in large quantities, they can anesthetize your tongue. And when that wears off, you realize that your mouth has been shredded raw by the sugar.

Why is it that when I try to reach for an orange or yellow one, the black ones form a defensive barrier, which forces me to eat my way through it to get to the good ones? Finally, I'll break through, but by that point my tongue is too numb to taste the tangy orange. The struggle was in vain.

I'll even shake up the bag a little to confuse their ranks, but they soon regroup to repel my advances.

I'm looking at my bag of jelly beans and I think it's looking back at me and mocking my feeble attacks. But in the end, I'll be the victor ? holding a bag of licorice jelly beans.