She spent the morning trying to teach Deirdre that chapstick was to be put on the lips and not eaten. It was an exhausting battle. Each stick smelled like sickly sweet candied fruit. It was a nontoxic, child friendly formula with Bluey characters on the label. Truthfully, She didn’t worry too much if Deirdre did eat it. It wouldn’t hurt her anyway, but it did open her up to the idea of eating other things that she shouldn’t.
How hard is it to understand that just because something smells good, doesn’t mean it’s meant to be consumed, She asked herself as the child took another nibble of a pink, strawberry scented stick. Just then, a memory from elementary school came flooding back to Her.
It was 4th grade, only a few short weeks away from summer vacation. The classroom reeked of synthetic vanilla and sugar from the Lip Smackers birthday cake flavored lip frosting that smothered the mouths of every girl in class. It was the hottest item among 4th grade girls that year, at least at Her school, and had become scarce as its popularity grew.
She, being a bit of a tomboy who notoriously hated makeup, even fell for the fad. It wasn’t the brand or the packaging or the shimmering pink and cream colored gloss that attracted her. It was the flavor.
That brand of gloss had a tendency to taste like the thing it smelled like, and the birthday cake flavor was undeniably the best. She went through a tube a week. It started out innocent. A light application here, a little lick of Her lips there. Soon, it snowballed into an addiction. She’d buy two or three tubes when She found them in stock, and rather than apply them to Her lips, She squirted the gloss directly into Her mouth like shimmering cans of whipped cream.
She wasn’t alone in Her strange addiction. The entire 4th grade female population did it. Even some boys indulged in the glossy confection. It was a particularly popular snack among the daughters of almond moms. Teachers would complain and confiscate tubes of lip gloss whenever they saw someone snacking, but it didn’t deter anyone. They’d simply pull out a new tube and continue eating.
She looked down at Deirdre, who had been rubbing chapstick on her tongue for the past minute, and sighed. She had no right to criticize, although She doubted that the cheap, waxy chapstick tasted anywhere near as good as Her childhood lip gloss.
Help, I Need An Adult! 