I have this really potent, wild memory that has crept back into my thoughts lately.
I was around five. Dad was out, Mom in the living room, Ariel was a snoozing baby. I snuck up onto the kitchen counter. It was crooked, a standalone construction that, like the rest of the kitchen, was tilted about 10 degrees horizontally. You could put a ball in the entry door and it would roll on its own down to the stove.
Anyway, I had not yet climbed a counter in my life due to my mother's repeated warnings about breaking a collarbone, which happened to her at three years old from climbing on a counter. And hers I think was perfectly level. I don't remember much else about the counter other than that it had some weird laminate on the top of it that peeled off over the years. Not sure if that was original or another hideous redesign. I crawled up, grabbed the sugar from a higher shelf, and sat down on the counter.
The sugar was in a rectangular tin that had a strawberry print on it. (Etsy tells me that it's made of brass.)
I opened the tin and started spooning the sugar into my mouth. I'd never done this before, either. My exposure to this sugar tin was limited to the smattering of sugar Mom would put on my oatmeal, rice (yes, instant rice with butter and sugar) and in my already sugared breakfast cereal. It wasn't something to be eaten on its own. However, lucky little jerk of a sister got her pacifier dipped in sugar whenever she cried. Are you appalled yet? Horrified? Yeah, me too I guess. But that was just life, I'm sure plenty of Appalachians relate.
I didn't know what motivated me to sit there and eat it. I remember how utterly gritty it felt, and that it was sour and burned going down. I felt thirstier than I ever had in my life. There was nothing pleasant about it. And yet I got some weird euphoria out of sitting there. I was smugly eating the forbidden food, dangling my legs above the floor like a wild person, focusing on choking down the grainy solid while I stared at that ugly linoleum on the counter.
I heard Mother move and I kicked off the counter. I hid the sugar, which she found later and didn't even question its removal from the high shelf. I still felt as though I had "won" something, but I have not eaten plain sugar out of a container since then. Peanut butter? Yeah. Biscoff cookie spread? A whole fucking jar in one sitting, and I'll do it again. Cookie dough? To the point of stomach ache. But not sugar.