I Was A Dealer

It's an all-too familiar site on school playgrounds and parking lots these days - the students gathered around a drug dealer, handing them their lunch money and allowance in exchange for a joint or pills or powder or crystal rocks in a little plastic bag. The dealer is always smiling; they're getting a wad of cash and are making a hefty profit, at some poor kid's expense.  I have a secret to share with you, my faithful readers.  Back in elementary school, I was a dealer. We didn't even know what pot or crack was back then.  We dealt in a much hotter commodity: I was a cinnamon toothpick dealer.

The cinnamon toothpick lab was our kitchen counter.  It was a very simple process: soak wooden toothpicks in cinnamon oil.  The finished product would then be wrapped in aluminum foil and tucked into my purse or book satchel for transport. Most would be sold on the bus before we would even get to school.  I made some good money on these, since I had no overhead and no production costs, since the toothpicks and cinnamon oil came from our kitchen cabinet.  When my supply would be getting low, I'd simply toss a box of toothpicks or a bottle of cinnamon oil into the grocery cart when Mom was doing her shopping, and she was none the wiser.

The kids liked my cinnamon toothpicks the best, since they were stronger because I soaked them in the cinnamon oil longer. They all knew not to give me away if they got caught with them in class; they were loyal clients.  But I never heard of any of my clients getting in trouble with the teachers over having cinnamon toothpicks during class.  I'm sure they must have thought they were teaching a classroom full of James Deans or Marlon Brandos, seeing us kids sitting there chewing on toothpicks.

The longer you would chew or suck on the cinnamon toothpicks, the hotter they would get.  Only the wusses would spit them out when they got hot. Some of the real tough kids would take this one step farther - they would take Kleenax or toilet paper, and wad it up to about the size of a big pea, and then put the cinnamon oil on the wad and then put it between their cheek and gum, just like snuff or chewing tobacco.  Talk about hot. You had to be one real tough kid to do this and not have the tears start flowing like water.   I never did this; I kept my covetedbottle of cinnamon oil at home in the kitchen cabinet, and I would have never even thought of bringing it to school, for fear some other dealer would hit me and steal it. 

I kept my personal stash of cinnamon toothpicks in a very cool old glass spice bottle that Grandma gave to me.  It even had a cool glass and rubber stopper on it, so they would stay good and fresh.  I came across that bottle the other day in the cabinet when I was looking for some corriander. When I opened it, you could still smell a hint of cinnamon.  I looked some more, and found the old bottle of cinnamon oil.  Maybe I'll make a batch tonight and take them to work tomorrow.