Arrrgh

You never know what childhood perceptions are going to turn into landmines until you step right in the middle of one. My first experience with this phenomenon was a few years ago when I realized why I so dearly love to drink soda. For me, the progression goes like this:

Soda = Treat = HAPPY! = Grow-up-and-drink-ALL-the-soda

It’s as simple as that. The fizz and the cola taste just make my day better. Figuring that out after umpteen years has broken the chain, if not the want. As in, I don’t drink it all the time now, even though I still want to. Instead I just chug lots of water and enjoy the occasional treat. Landmine deactivated.

Yesterday, however, I derped right into a new mine, and this one went off. What was it? A tic tac. More specifically, a big honking package of fruity, delicious tic tacs. I started picking these up a few weeks ago because they’re nice to nibble when I’m working at the computer. Where is the boom, you ask? It’s in the sugar content. Oh yes, they have sugar!

Because of my erroneous childhood perception that tic tacs were sugar-free (no idea where that notion came from), I thought I could nom away at them and not bother to log the nommage. WRONG! Yesterday I noticed the ingredients list has sugar first. Uh-oh. So I plugged in the 75 that I had nibbled over the day to find 150 wasted calories and a completely blown carb macro. My fasting blood sugar this morning was horrific.

So now I’m sitting here with two packages of uneaten tic tacs that I no longer want because all I see are tasty little Doom Nuggets. In the grand scheme, this isn’t a big deal; life will go on, sugars will return to normal, and I’ll know better in the future. I’m a bit miffed at myself for not paying attention, but this mini debacle did manage to improve my mental metal detector.

Read those labels, folks. Boom-shaka-laka.