Gumdrop With an Attitude Problem or Rice Candy?

My co-workers will often bring all kinds of cookies and candy back from wherever they went to lunch. The particular day in question was special because they all went for sushi, and had stopped at a japanese market that was nearby.

They introduced me to the perfect cookie this way. It is called Pocky. They taste exactly like chocolate milano cookies, only they are what I call "chocolate covered sticks." Basically the cookie part is in a stick form, and the chocolate is on one side of it. Sooooo goood.

On another occasion, they brought back something called Botan Rice Candy.

Because they had been so right about the Pocky cookie sticks' fabulousness, I decided to try a piece of this rice candy that they were all raving about. Now, anyone already familiar with rice candy can probably guess where this is going. Apparently there's an entire subgroup of people out there that know this stuff and how it works. This group consists of everyone but me.

This is what the candy looks like out of the box. Simple enough, right? It's got a plastic wrapper on it and you unwrap it to get to the good stuff, right?

Not so much. I unwrapped the first layer and was faced with a second layer. I thought "uh? What's up with that? Oh well, sometimes you have to work for it I guess." I tried to get the gummy candy out of the inner wrapper, and I had no luck. The insides split apart and the wrapper broke off in my fingers in such a way that it was obvious the candy would not ever be freed from it's wrappery sufficiently enough to be consumed. I just figured that maybe the contents were old and I quietly slid the piece I was fighting with into the trash can.

About 10 minutes passed when the two attorneys that had purchased the candy came out and asked how I liked it. "Oh, I'm not hungry at the moment..." I said. They knew right away I was totally fibbing. "Ohmygosh!" they gushed, "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO EAT IT, DO YOU?!"

I just kinda looked at them with a stupid look on my face. One of them grabbed a piece out of the box and started telling me "It's fun! You have to eat the wrapper! Seriously. It's meant to be eaten. That's how it works. I never should have left you alone with the candy. I didn't realize you had no idea how to work it."

I immediately thought this was an elaborate set up for retribution. I've pulled quite a few jokes on my co-workers, and was convinced that this was a clever way to trick me into eating plastic. I unintentially highlighed my naivete by defending my choice not to eat the candy wrapper with some bravado.

"Please. I might not be an expert of many things, but I know my candy and confectionary foods. I also managed to pay attention when my parents taught me not to eat paste as a kid. I'm not eating plastic. Sorry."

One of them got the gigles over my terror of eating "the plastic". She unwrapped the piece of candy she had in her hand and showed me the candy wrapped in only ONE wrapper. She then popped it in her mouth and chewed it up. Swallowed it. Then laughed at me some more.

A few other co-workers came by, and because the universe loves to grind my confidence into the carpet with the heel of it's shoe, this is exactly what happened next. Almost every single one of them saw the box, paused and then said "OH, is that Rice Candy? I love this stuff. Eating the wrapper is half the fun!"

Oh, of course it is.

That's when I gave in and realized that life had pulled a joke on me without even trying. I threw one of the candies in my mouth with the edible wrapper. It still felt like plastic to me, and sorta tasted like plastic too. But it did dissolve rather effortlessly.

That night I came home and demanded that Mr. Zoom drop everything he was doing and join me in the kitchen. You see, I still wasn't convinced that I hadn't actually eaten plastic at the office. I wanted to see if someone else, in the same kind of circumstances, would try to eat the candy the same way I did; i.e., trying to get all of the plastic off of it before eating it. To my relief, he tried to remove the second, inner wrapper too. When I told him that there was a chance that we were supposed to actually eat that inner wrapper, he said "OH, rice paper!"

And that's the exact moment I noticed the instructions/information on the box:

Well, at least I know what to be for Halloween. Girl living under a rock.