What a Sap
I’m so mad that I missed the maple syrup smell again. Last time, I guess it just passed me by. Yesterday, I was home sick and sad to hear midtown sweet scent reports. I’m not even a big fan of maple, it’s just the principle.
Which reminds me of one of my first NYC culture shocks: no maple bars. Seriously, I had no idea this was a regional thing, every grocery store and chain like Dunkin’ Donuts (which are all going out of business on the west coast, despite thriving out here) carries maple bars. It's not like the NW is exactly teeming with maple trees, either. The closest I’ve come in the last seven years has been maple dips at Tim Hortons in eastern Canada. They were typically round with a hole, not long and bun shaped, but the treat was still coated in tan, tree sap tinged icing.
While I’m on a maple nostalgia trip, there was a weird incident in first grade where we’d had maple bars for lunch. And then while playing handball during recess afterwards, this other girl named Krista (Hagen, I think) who came in the middle of the year so she was weird, smiled and her teeth were all brown and maple-y like they were frosting coated. It was kind of obscene, I tried not to stare too hard at her pearly beiges. The thing is, it turned out that her teeth always looked like that and I’d just never noticed until that moment. How did a six-year-old’s teeth get so rotten?
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