A mom went shopping the other day. It was a day in early December and she was picking up some Christmas presents for her family. The stores were crowded with other shoppers but she was in a good mood humming along to the Christmas music playing in the background. At the checkout she bought 1 candy cane to give to her youngest daughter. Her daughter, Molly, had blonde hair and blue eyes, and she was just at that age where she loved everything about Christmas.
The little girl squealed in delight when she saw the candy cane and wanted to open it immediately, but it was too close to dinner and the mom didn’t want her to have candy before dinner so she told her daughter to save it for later. Molly said she would save it for the next day and take it to school.
All during the morning the little girl was finding it hard to pay attention to her school lessons. She kept thinking about the candy cane she would have at lunch. During her math lesson she made her 11’s look like candy canes, during her vocabulary she hoped one of the words was candy cane but it wasn’t, but she added it to her list anyhow. She even told her best friend about her candy cane, and then she told her she would give her a piece because that’s what best friends are for, to share candy canes with.
Finally it was lunch time and Molly hurried to the lunch room and excitedly unpacked her lunch. Her best friend, Emily, wanted to open the candy cane first, but Molly said they should eat their lunches first and save the candy for last. So that’s what they did and it sat on the table between them.
But they forgot about Mark Snell…Mark Snell was a couple of years older and he was big and mean and he never packed his own lunch. Instead Mark Snell would take food from other people’s lunches, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from Joey and a pudding cup from Mary and if anybody had any candy Mark Snell was sure to find it and take some of it. Just as Molly was finishing her lunch and about to open her candy cane, Mark Snell appeared behind her and snatched it out of her hand.
“Give it back” wailed the little girl, but Mark Snell never gave anything back especially candy. He held the candy cane just out of the little girl’s reach even as she tried to jump up and take it back. In fact Mark Snell laughed at the little girl and he had a particularly evil laugh, the kind you always remember even when you grow up and never see Mark Snell again, you remember his laugh. Just then the school bell rang and all the kids began packing up their things and heading off to their next class, and the little girl was left standing there, sad for she had not gotten a chance to eat her candy cane.
Mark Snell knew he couldn’t eat the candy cane in class so he put it in his backpack. He decided he would eat it after school in his bedroom while he was playing video games. Mark Snell’s two favorite things to do were play video games and eat candy. His hands and fingers were always sticky or chocolatey and he always wiped them on his shirt or pants or if he was playing video games in his bedroom, he would wipe them on the bedspread because that’s what boys like Mark Snell do.
But Mark Snell didn’t get a chance to eat the candy cane because his friend invited him over to play video games at his house, and his friend had the new zombie killer video game and if there were three things Mark Snell liked it was candy, video games and killing zombies in video games. He was so excited about going to his friends house to kill zombies he totally forgot about the candy cane as he threw his backpack across the kitchen floor where it skidded and then thudded into his mom’s leg as she stood in the kitchen doing the dishes. She yelled after him to “come back here and pick up this backpack before you go anywhere,” but it was no use, Mark Snell was on his way to his friends house to kill zombies and perhaps wipe his sticky fingers on his friends bedspread.
Mark Snell’s mother sighed and asked her daughter, Joy, to pick up her older brothers backpack and take it to his room. She didn’t really want to pick up her older brothers backpack but she knew better than to say no to her mom when her mom was busy in the kitchen, so she trudged down the hall dragging the backpack behind her. His backpack was really heavy and she struggled to lift it on to his bed. What did he carry in there that made it so heavy she wondered. She tiptoed to the door to make sure no one was coming down the hall and then she quietly opened the backpack.
There was a bunch of crumpled papers and a couple of books she had never seen her brother reading, and a rubber snake that almost made her scream, but she recognized it as the one that he had hid under her pillow the week before, because that’s what kind of a brother Mark Snell was, always hiding rubber snakes and toy spiders under his sisters pillow. Then she saw the candy cane at the bottom of the backpack. She couldn’t resist taking it out and holding it in her hands, this could be pay back for all the mean jokes and other rotten big brother stuff he did to her. She put it in her pocket and quietly closed up the backpack and tiptoed back to her room. She didn’t want to eat it at home because she didn’t want her mom or her brother to see it, so she figured she would take it to school the next day and eat it there.
The little girl was excitedly showing the candy cane to her best friend when the teacher, Mr. Hunter walked into the classroom. Mr. Hunter was an older teacher who had a knack for stopping disturbances in his classroom before they started, and the presence of candy was definitely a disturbance waiting to happen. Joy did not see her teacher until he was standing over her, he had his hand out and she knew he would take her candy cane. He didn’t say a thing, he just shook his head and she sadly handed over the candy cane. He put it in his desk drawer with all the other objects that he had confiscated, things like whoopee cushions and fake vomit and lots and lots of candy. He kept thinking he should clean out his drawer some day but he never did.
At lunch that day the lunchroom was unusually noisy as the first snow of the year had begun to fall. The children were talking loudly and excitedly about plans for after school snow ball fights and snow man making. There was one table of 4 little girls who were not talking about after school activities. They sat quietly and glumly eating their lunches, two of them had a candy cane taken away from them and the other two had been promised a piece of the candy cane.
Just then Mr. Hunter entered the lunch room, he had not packed a lunch so he figured he would see what they were serving today. It appeared to be some sort of brown slop and some potatoes. He decided he wasn’t really that hungry after all and he would skip lunch. As he was walking back through the lunchroom he saw the 4 sad little girls sitting at a table all by themselves. Mr. Hunter was not an unreasonable man, he had daughters himself and although they were now older, he had hated to see them sad. He knelt down next to Joy and produced the candy cane from his pocket.
“If you promise not to bring candy into my classroom again, I’ll give you back this candy cane.”
The little girls eyes widened with excitement and she eagerly nodded her head, she had the candy cane again. She would open it immediately and share a piece with her best friend. But then she noticed the two other girls at the table. They looked very sad, in fact Molly looked like she might start crying. The little girl was silent for a moment as she looked at the candy cane and then at her best friend, and then at the other two little girls.
“Would you like a piece of my candy cane?” she asked the other girls. “We could split it so we all get a piece” she added.
Molly who was on the verge of crying, suddenly was quite happy and her best friend was happy too. In fact all 4 of the little girls were happy, because the candy cane that had been given to Molly by her mother and then taken away by Mark Snell and thrown in his backpack, and then sneaked out of his backpack by his little sister and then taken away by Mr. Hunter, the candy cane that had made 2 little girls very sad was now making 4 little girls very happy.
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