'Ode to artificial flavor' or 'funyons the secret to eternal youth'

When I was in second grade I took the same thing for lunch every day. A round personal pizza, a can of orange soda, a thermos of beef Ramon, broth in a Tupperware cup so the noodles didn't get too soggy, carrot or bell pepper sticks, and a $.50 bag of funyuns (equal to a $.99 bag at 2012 prices)

I had a pretty fulfilled life at 8 years old, had a sparkly new pink bicycle, a well behaved husky, named Magnum, a TV in my bedroom with 55 channels (at that time only maybe 4 were news channels, one weather channel, and one Spanish channel) my own phone, a swimming pool in the back yard that we used for as close to 5 months out of the year as possible; no matter how blue our lips were after 15 minutes; and a bright yellow JEEP radio housed in a box that was designed to resemble a tool box. Yea, life was good in 1992.

While I have millions of found memories from my youth, and so many smells trigger the joy of those memories, to this very day none can compare to the euphoria that is attached to the first puff sent that comes from the artificial flavoring when you open a new bag of funyuns. That oniony goodness that invades your nose like Greeks entering troy, exiting their inconspicuous present to concur the city. It dances across your nostrils and lingers like a lover left alone.

That smell to this very day brings me back to what it truly meant to be me in second grade, to sitting In that crowded lunchroom, to talking about cartoons and YIKES pencils, to the freedom to believe in magic, to the feeling of eyeing my first crush from across the room, to the excitement of getting to stay up late to watch Quantum Leap, to making Christmas lists for Santa, top playing kick ball and hand ball and cats cradle and pick up sticks. Funyons are a virtual time machine for me, and at nearly 28 years old, I recently bought a bag of Funyons as an afternoon snack. For .0232 of a second after I opened the bag, I could hear the roar of the cafeteria, taste the bits of pizza still occupying my teeth, see the tall curly haired boy from the other class laughing with his friends, feel the hard plastic bench under my butt. For just a moment I felt like a kid again.