My love affair with jelly beans begins!

I have loved-loved jelly beans my whole life. Anyone who knows me knows I look forward to “jelly bean season” like a runner prepares for a marathon! Plus, my closest friends know I always have a bag of Jellys Bellys with me at all times (my love affair with Jelly Bellys is more recent, more about that in a later post). But how and why I started really loving jelly beans wasn’t because of Easter, it began when I started getting allergy shots. How is that for an unlikely beginning!! 

When I was in elementary school I had allergies, and after having an allergy test it was determined that I needed weekly allergy shots. Like any kid, getting shots were not fun, let alone once week!  My mother would drive me to Wayzata every Saturday morning for my shot. I’ll never forget that first time when the nurse pulled up my sleeve and administered the shot. I was nervous and apprehensive, which I swear made the shot hurt that much more. Ouch!  Not fun. But to my surprise after the shot she pushed forward a candy jar full of jelly beans! These were the big, Brach jelly beans: red, purple, pink, orange, green, white, yellow and black! Oh heaven. As she pushed the jar toward me so I could take one (yes, only one – c’est impossible!) I reached in and pulled out the one on top – a big purple jelly bean. It was love at first bite.

Suddenly the torture of having a weekly shot along with the added mandatory misery of sitting around for 20 minutes to make sure there wasn't a reaction to the shot wasn’t so bad, because I was guaranteed my one rationed jelly bean! Each week I silently prayed a purple one would be on top and was invariably disappointed if I ended up with a green or yellow one.  Red was my second favorite color, with the white one a distant third (for some reason the white ones always seem strangely exotic to me – maybe because for being such a plain color they taste so good?).  To this day, 40+ years later, those are still my favorite three colors!  Hmm, why do I associate the Brach jelly beans with a color and not a flavor? Don’t know, don’t care, just give me my purple jelly bean!