Get the Gushers

A mostly Sunday Suggestions post

Summer is not my favorite season.

This is mostly for mosquito and sweating related reasons, so I can admit that the season isn’t totally without its charms. In fact there are several things I look forward to as spring slowly (and then often all at once) turns into summer here in Minnesota. There is the week at the cabin, the women’s triathlon to train for, the prospect of taking some Friday afternoons off and sneaking out for a reading session at the lake, and the re-opening of my beloved public pool just to name a few.

Yesterday, in anticipation of another summer spent making full use of my $138 pass, I started packing my pool bag. I keep my bag stocked with all the essentials, so we’re always ready to get out the door quickly for a quick dip. I’ve got the obvious (towel, sunscreen, many pairs of goggles so we can share with our friends, obnoxiously large sun hat), the specific (three issues of Vanity Fair from 2022 that I swear I’m finally going to read. Last summer I finished an issue from 2017, so hope always springs eternal), and the most import: the snack bag.

Now, our pool has both a snack bar and an official “no outside snacks allowed” policy. I cannot overstate how wildly and overtly this rule is flouted. Like people bringing full on coolers or getting Jimmie John’s delivered to the gates level of unconcern about this rule. The teenage life guards could clearly not care even a little bit, which is good because the snack bar is the worst trifecta of overpriced, terrible quality, and stupidly long lines on hot concrete. No thank you.

So I have the snack bag, which is a gallon sized Ziplock filled with a mixture of granola bars, snack packs of Cheez-its, some left over Easter candy, single servings of nuts or trail mix and the Gushers.

Let me tell you about the Gushers, but first let me preface this by saying that I am a pro-treat parent. We always have snacks in the house and, as a dedicated sweet tooth myself, that usually includes some manner of candy/cookies/ice cream/etc. My children are in no way deprived of access to treats. But, for whatever reason, Gushers were never really a treat we had around. About six years ago, however, I happened to buy a box on the opening weekend of the pool and tucked them into the swim bag.

We went to the pool, found our usual crowd of friends, and settled in for the afternoon. The vibe with my pool friends is very communal. We share sunscreen and magazines and voting expertise for cannonball contests. We also, as a general rule, share snacks.

Which is how I learned that you can almost instantly become the most popular mom at the pool if you happen to pull out a box of Gushers.

That first summer, when I pulled out the small box with eight or so individual pouches in it, I was instantly surrounded by children (including two of my own) sticking out dripping hands and exclaiming with joy at getting the tropical fruit or strawberry flavor. The box was emptied in an afternoon and I didn’t buy any more boxes of Gushers for the rest of the year, despite several hopeful requests for them from various children at the pool for the rest of the summer.

The next summer, I returned to the pool and discovered that the Gushers had taken on a kind of mythical status. Apparently, the pack of children belonging to me and my friends had taken “one time Wendy had Gushers at the pool” and turned it into “Wendy ALWAYS has Gushers at the pool and thus it isn’t summer without getting Gushers at the pool”.

I did not have Gushers that first day.

But I damn sure did the second day. And thus the sugar craving hopes of a small group of kids started to morph in to a tradition, which is why I bought a 42 count box of Gushers at Costco yesterday.

(The last three Costco trips with my daughter involved her spotting the boxes of Gushers and saying “not yet… but soon, right Mom? RIGHT??”)

The kids were all, well, kids that first summer, ranging from 7 to 13. There were no trips to the pool without us. They needed us for rides and snacks and forced sunscreen application. Those same kids are now nearly all teenagers. They are old enough to not only go to the pool alone but, in my son’s case, to drive themselves there. They have plenty of access to and ability to buy their own snacks (there is a gas station across the street from their school that does a very brisk business in candy sales before and after school, I am certain). They still might require us to nag them into sunscreen use but the truth is that they just don’t need us as much as they used to.

There is joy in this, of course. I don’t have to supervise bathroom trips. I can read without having to stop every paragraph to make sure everyone is safe. My friends and I actually have full conversations without interruptions as the kids head off for the diving bay or start reading their own books. It is easier, in almost every way.

But I also know that as soon as the box comes out, the not-quite-kids anymore will still line up with hands outstretched, will still try to negotiate trades for their preferred flavor, will still know that summer smells like chlorine and tastes like Gushers.

***

And now some things I’m into at the start of summer:

• I’m not usually a big puzzle person (a combo of attention span issues and being not great at spatial relations) but I’m contemplating this one for taking to the cabin later this month. It’s called Wild Summer, which feels right.

• Speaking of going to the cabin, we will be playing many, many rounds of Dutch Blitz, my on-going favorite card game

• An amusing round-up of office theft stories at Ask a Manager (I can totally see myself doing something like #3 and being fully mortified)

• New Costco dip discovery… will for sure be having this for lunch this week

  

• What if a line of coke designed a mega mansion?

• This is a perfect pool bag and currently on sale at Land’s End (Full disclosure: I don’t have this exact one but I have one just like it and I use it almost daily in the summer)

  

• Love a new poem by Kate Baer

• I’d heard about the Tylenol murder case but didn’t really know much about what actually happened so I was fascinated by this three part series on Netflix.

• Relatable x two