Soggy Licorice and the B-I-B-L-E

When I was about 12, I joined the Bible Quizzing team at a church 30 miles from A-Town. My local parish had no such team, and I wanted to “play”! So my super-supportive parents drove me to Sunday evening practices, and I made a new set of friends from a different school district in the process. It was very beneficial to my adolescent psyche. I got to start over with a peer group who hadn’t known me since kindergarten—didn’t know me as “the smart kid,” “the band teacher’s daughter,” or “the biggest girl in the class.” I was just me, and I was accepted quickly and warmly. But attempting to make inroads with previously established pals did bring about a few difficult and awkward moments. The “soggy licorice” incident was one of those times. . . . .

First, a bit of background: In Bible Quizzing, groups of teenagers from many churches in our denomination study a designated set of Scriptures each school year. The individual church teams typically meet weekly to practice “quizzing,” in which teens sit on specially designed chairs and jump up to respond to questions about the Word. The first jumper (determined electronically, through sensors) gets the first chance to answer the question; if that person doesn’t answer correctly, the second-fastest jumper gets a chance, then the next, then the next. Correct answers garner points for the quizzer and their team, and the team with the most points after 15 questions wins that round.

Quiz teams prepare for and travel to local-regional tournaments on a monthly basis, culminating with a national gathering of all the teams in early summer. (In fact, this year’s Nationals just wrapped up yesterday.) In my first year as a quizzer, I had bonded well with my team. I had traveled with them for to the monthly tourneys. And I felt very comfortable heading to the national contest in Michigan. However, when we arrived on the college campus hosting the event, I found myself somewhat slighted, come room assignment time. There were 3 or 4 groupings of girls, and because of the aforementioned pre-formed friendships, I got left out of the lodging loop. I had a place to stay, but with 2 older girls, Leah and Lizzie, who were kind to me but not inclusive. L&L’s main mission for the week (besides—of course—the B-I-B-L-E) was B-O-Y-S. A cute guy named Trent was the chief object of their frivolous, flirtatious pursuits. They’d met him and his almost-as-cute friend Todd the previous year and, apparently, pined for them ever since. I was present in the room but barely noticeable to this pair of flibberty gibbets.

One evening when they were off making moon eyes in the moonlight, I had nothing to do and no place to go, with no one around. I felt sorry for myself, but didn’t want to succumb to the pitifulness of sitting in the dorm room alone while everyone else seemed to be having the time of their lives. So I thought to turn to an old friend: Candy. I took my pocket money and headed to the convenience store a quarter-mile from campus, where I bought myself an assortment of “comfort foods”: a bag of chips, I think, some soda (probably Orange Crush), and my favorite, black licorice. I left the store and began chomping on my snacks as I strolled back to the school, pondering what else to do for the remaining hour before a respectable bedtime arrived. I walked, munched and sipped, juggling the bags and the pop bottle.

I was only a few hundreds yards from the dorm when, endeavoring to pry open the bag of Twizzlers, I yanked too hard and sent licorice whips flying through the air in several directions. The whips landed on a gravelly patch of parking lot. Straight away, naturally, I darted my eyes in several directions to make sure no one had seen this embarrassing incident. Then I gingerly knelt down in the gravel, quickly shoveled the candy back into the bag, and scrambled to my feet, still peering around to stave off eyewitnesses. It worked. No one saw. But I felt mortified anyhow, and I bit back tears until I reached my room.

“Now what?” I asked myself. Not wanting my investment in candy and comfort to be wasted, I carefully rinsed the small stones off the licorice and down the dorm sink drain. I placed one of the college-issued white hand towels in the top desk drawer, and I spread out the hard-fought licorice whips to dry. I ate a few of them, even though they tasted funny. . .watery. I had a good cry, shut the drawer, and forgot all about the licorice whips. Until two days later, when Leah and Lizzie discovered the strange, stringy, gray-black blob in the desk and I had to explain. Humiliations galore!