Ragan Armstrong is a cat-loving 20-year-old from Piper, Kansas who is majoring in “biochemisery” at the University of Kansas. She shared a story from her childhood, along with a couple of photos of the incident. It’s possible that some creative liberties were taken with the story, with the permission of its subject.
The night was beautiful- too beautiful for the circumstance at hand. Ragan had been wronged, and she wasn’t about to forget it just because she had filled up on pizza and watched cartoons to her heart’s content. Oh, no- something was amiss and a-missing.
They had visited her grandparents recently, and that meant that there was candy somewhere in this house, and she was going to find it or get a time-out trying. That bag full of glorious goods was rightfully hers, and she would be danged if she let anyone tell her when she could and could not eat ten pieces at once.
Ragan recruited the help of her younger sister, and they stalked stealthily around corners, examining all the boring parent-y places they could think of- behind the books on shelves, the vegetable drawer, the laundry room- all to no avail. She had just taken a break from her quest to drink some juice and contemplate her existence (What was life for, if not eating candy?) when something caught her eye. The cabinet above the stove.
It was a hard place to reach as a five-year-old, but it was just the sort of place her parents would choose.
She glanced around the kitchen to make sure that no authority figures were lurking in the shadows, waiting to bust her. When she had deduced that the coast was clear, she left her half-empty juice on the table and made her way to the counter, sister in tow. Using all the strength that she could muster in her pink-pajama-clothed body, she climbed up to where she could better reach the gold mine that was sure to exist inside that high cabinet.
She crossed her fingers, hoping beyond hope that this cabinet contained all she was looking for. The dark brown wood slid open to reveal a glorious sight- all the candy that she had so dearly missed since acquiring it from her grandparents. She reached in to grab the bag of candy. At last, it was in her hands and all was right with the world…
That is, until she turned around and saw her mom with the camera in hand.
“When I was younger, my great grandparents owned a meat market and whenever we visited them they gave us bags full of candy. Obviously, being like 5-years-old, my parents didn’t want us to eat every single piece at once so they hid it in a cupboard above the stove. That should stop us, right? Wrong.”