The slender disks crunched deliciously in the mouth, powder pink, powder green, powder orange, powder brown (that was root beer), and best of all, powder black. A whole roll fit in the pocket. (My grandmother always sewed pockets on my dresses, a concession to the tomboy she perceived me to be. I didn't have a purse, of course. I was only six years old.)
I bought Necco wafers at the candy store on the way to school, using the coins from my carved wooden box, where I had quite an accumulation. I'd put my weekly 25¢ allowance in there all my life, because before starting school I really didn't have any place to spend money.
But we were not allowed to eat candy in school, and that was almost my first lesson. Well, my actual first lesson was my teacher, Miss Sherrick, telling me on the first day of school that my rainbow should extend all the way to the ground at the ends. Miss Sherrick picked up a red crayon and delicately finished the red part of my rainbow arch over the house with its square front and waisted curtains in two front windows. Then Miss Sherrick left my desk to check on the other children's drawings that first day of school, and I dutifully extended the orange yellow green blue purple bands to the ground. Yes, that did look neater.
But soon after that lesson I learned that pulling a roll of Necco wafers out of the pocket of my dress was not allowed. Not allowed at all, and that only a very bad child would even think of doing such a thing. I did it again anyway, just to see what would happen. Miss Sherrick strode to my desk and put out her stern white hand, palm up. Somehow I understood that I must surrender my Necco wafers, of which I had eaten only two or three. Miss Sherrick gave them back to me at the end of the day but warned me that next time I would lose them for good.
The next day I bought Necco wafers and kept them in my pocket. I tried to get one out of its wrapping in my pocket so as not to reveal the roll. Miss Sherrick was watching me. I knew she was watching, but I thought maybe if my hand moved very very slowly she would not realize what I was doing. The moment I peeled back the first flap of the paper, everyone could hear the rustle, and Miss Sherrick was on top of me in a flash, white hand out, the fingers extended so sharply that her palm made a little hill. I placed my Necco wafers on that hill, and the fingers sprang shut like a trap on my candy. I guess Miss Sherrick ate it herself, as I never got it back.
I did learn to eat candy in class without detection. The secret was to unwrap it first and put the candies loose in the pocket. Then I could extract one when the teacher turned to write on the blackboard. And if I sucked on it, never crunching it, I could enjoy the sweet taste for a long time. It was tempting sometimes, to bite it as it grew thinner and thinner, but the slight motion of my jaws would be enough to trigger detection, for my teacher was on to me.
What I discovered was how much nicer the candy tasted when held and maintained in the mouth for a long time. The powdery surface melted away and left a slick but subtly textured circle, growing thinner until it had almost no thickness, like a pure idea in the mind, and yet the orange, lemon, root beer, or licorice remained..
And so I became a connoisseur of making things last. Candy was easy, and if sometimes, outside of class, one had a sudden urge to chomp down and take all the crunch in one glorious moment, no harm, there was always another in the pocket.