Never Grow Up

When I was 12 years old I would rollerblade down to our local drug store with my brothers and buy penny candies. We knew that with the dollar we each had we could buy 94 penny candies a piece with tax. 94 pieces of candy is a lot of candy. That much candy makes dentists everywhere smile as wide as the grinch. Muahaha. I was pretty much hooked on penny candies for much of my childhood. An intervention was probably in order but being as I come from a long line of candy lovers the denial ran deep. My brothers and I were really good at talking my Mom into giving us $1 a piece for our drug store excursions. There were more expensive candies at the drug store ranging from $.05 all the way up to a few dollars. One of the more expensive "luxury" candies was the Pez dispenser. You know those awesome little things (I'm biased) with the different character heads that when you pull the head back a piece of candy pops out. I had been eyeing the Pez display for a few weeks thinking to myself, "If I only could talk my mom into giving me a few more dollars I could make it rain with that Pez dispenser!" (Well maybe it wasn't that  thought exactly but something close to it.) This all went down in the summer and I had just been approached by my neighbors to mow their lawn for $20 a pop. My first thought was of course, "I can buy 1,880 penny candies with that kind of dough!" (Once again, the thought might be altered a little bit. Give me a break this was a long time ago!) Anyways, back to the riveting story. I knew that with my newly found cash money, I could afford some Pez dispensers. So I strapped on my Roces rollerblades and headed toward history.

The first Pez I ever bought was a Tweety Bird. 

I started off by just buying a few dispensers here and there and then this thing came along called Ebay. For those of you living in the stone age Ebay was started as a place to buy and sell Pez dispensers. (You now owe me $1.50 for that piece of knowledge.) With the advent of Ebay my collecting took off. 

I currently have about 1,000 dispensers and counting. In your mind you are probably imagining some awesome Pez room with Pez stacked floor-to-ceiling. Well think again good sir/madame. My Pez are packed away in many many boxes. I have been working on my wife for about 5 years now to get her excited about Pez collecting. For some crazy reason that hasn't happened yet and for some other crazy reason she won't allow them to be displayed in the family room. So they sit patiently in their containers waiting for the day that they can be released on the world to bring happiness and joy to every man, woman, and child. Yeah I am really just writing this blog to continue my efforts to talk my wife into allowing me to display them.

Live Long And Pez On! (Patent Pending.)