Green Grapes

During my life as an older sister, I have often petitioned the powers that be to lock up such dangerous items as scissors, pencils, rulers, and staplers. But I realized recently, as I petitioned my parents (unsuccessfully) to store jump ropes and paper clips locked both by combination and key operated locks, that two or three boys who become bored and use their brains and imaginations are capable of misusing just about anything.

The reason that I wanted paper clips and jump ropes stored more securely was that yesterday, as I sat leaning against a tree, deep in an interesting book, a pack of starbursts slowly making their way inside me, I took one, unwrapped it and put the wrapper in my pocket. I read a few more pages, and the last sticky remnants were floating down my throat, leaving a sugary taste behind, as I reached without looking for my Starbursts. I was eating them out of a – well, a square tube is the best description of the package, I guess. I picked it up and ripped the package down to pull out the next one. I stared. Instead of bright packages of orange and green, I beheld, nestled in the package, green grapes. As I stared, befuddled and desperately trying to return to 20th century America, I heard muffled laughing from above me.

After I chased down the treetop chucklers, I extracted information on their activities for the last twenty minutes. After I pieced together the confused story, I discovered that the grapes in my Starbursts were not evidence of any strange scientific phenomena or a mix up at the packaging factory- they were, rather, the fruition of a clever plot, planned on a level of stealth, secrecy, and intensity usually reserved for counter espionage missions.