Todessüßigkeiten!!!

Everyone--or at least the Post--is all up in arms about the Death Candy.

Whatever. I don't know how many children have choked to death, but clearly their parents didn't love them enough.

At a bodega last week, as I waited for my coffee, a little boy--probably 8 or so--came in and slapped a handful of pennies on the clear plastic countertop by the register. Underneath the plastic were little partitions, offering all sorts of third-world confections: Chicletas, Chupa Chups, Lead-Flavored Asbestos Taffy Twisters.

The boy pointed at one of the partitions. "That's the killer candy," he informed me.

And it was. Goddamn, those are some big candies--roughly the size of your standard Spalding Hi-Bounce. "That's the candy that the little girls choked on, right?" I asked him.

He nodded enthusiastically.

"You're not buying it for yourself, are you?"

He nodded enthusiastically again, then giggled.

I paid for my coffee and the man behind the counter set to counting the little boy's pennies, many of which had rolled to the other end of the countertop. "Have fun," I said.