works wonders.

I think it’s a miracle that I’m alive. Considering how many nights I drove cross country without sleeping alone makes this breath a miracle. Sleep, as I know many have experienced, can sneak up on us and seize us suddenly, and is quickly becoming a major cause of accidents and fatalities on America’s highways. But I think I’ve beaten sleep at its own game: I have outwitted sleep, the temptation to sleep when driving, and the occasional and dangerous drooping of the eyelids behind the wheel. All this, thanks to the Tootsie Roll Pop.
You remember the commercials, well, at least I do. The owl decides to find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie Roll Pop. He ends up crunching in, giving up the quest for the precise number of licks. The result: the world may never know.
I know how many licks it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie Roll Pop. I tested it over the course of one middle of the night drive through desolate and deer filled Montana and North Dakota. It takes roughly 1185 licks. Now, granted, I was determined to find the number of licks it took not just to reveal the first bit of the tootsie roll center. I pressed on to the higher, more time-consuming challenge of discovering how many licks it would take to completely rid the tootsie roll of the sugary substance covering up its pure state. I’ve debated the semantics of the question “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop” with various challengers to my licking methodology, but when it comes down to it, the licking was my antidote to sleep.
I’ve tried coffee, I’ve tried music, singing out loud to music, rolling down the windows and opening the sun roof, even pinching myself to bring my mind to a more alert state. I’ve consumed more frappuccinos and cokes and pixy stix and sweet snacks and salty ones, all in attempting to find some cure to that nagging sleepy feeling. I am sure I’ve put on a few pounds overnight while sitting behind the wheel of my beloved and faithful car, Dart, unwilling to stop and stretch, unwilling to go to a motel, my eye on the prize of the next destination. 28 hours of driving in a row was the particular stretch of time in which I met the Tootsie Roll Pop.
I first purchased the single Tootsie Roll Pop at a run of the mill gas station in some podunk town out west. I was surprised to see a gas station carrying something as simple as a Tootsie Roll Pop, mixed in there with the more attention grabbing king sized candy bars. I probably had not had a Tootsie Roll Pop in over 10 years. I began my drive again, unsuspecting of the greatness of the discovery that lay ahead.
It was late. Past 2am. My only traveling companion was sound asleep in the seat next to me. Here comes the music. The stretching and re-adjusting, cracking my neck, and checking all the mirrors comes and goes. I’m still stuck in this gray seat, still stuck behind the wheel. Not another car on the road ahead, none behind, and the oncoming headlights of a fellow middle of the night traveler only come around once every ten or fifteen minutes. Blackness to my left and right, trusting in the headlights to help guide my way along the curvy highway, somewhere in Montana. Nothing interesting to even look at. This was bad. The yawning commences. So I take a sip of my coke and grab for a snack: the Tootsie Roll Pop gets chosen at random. I peel off the wrapper and pop the sucker in my mouth.
Nothing surprising about the taste. No sizzle like Pop Rocks, no changing flavors or colors. Standard, cherry taste. I began to lick this thing, and then settle on letting it sit in my mouth for a moment. But only a moment: I soon discover the great threat this poses to my image and self-consciousness, that I could get caught drooling with this thing in my mouth. The idea of sticky, sugary cherry red goo dribbling down my mouth as I drove just didn’t appeal to me. So after a moment, the pop has to come out of my mouth. It can’t just sit there dissolving slowly. I have to intentionally lick this thing to diminish its size and reach the treasure in the center. But licking a Tootsie Roll Pop is no simple matter. You can’t go too fast or you’ll rub your tongue raw. You can’t take your time or the drool could come, or worse, while holding the pop in one hand you could easily sticky-fy anything it might bump up against while out of your mouth. No, to be safe, you have to continue to lick this pop, mindful of speed and intensity, and you can’t drop it unless you want stickiness to infest your car seats and floorboards. Licking a Tootsie Roll Pop while driving forces you to focus your attention on this task. You can’t zombie out while licking a Tootsie Roll Pop. Your mind must be engaged, your faculties engaged, in order to both enjoy the pop and prevent the aforementioned sticky situations. My mind, taking in the road before me, must also simultaneously actively remember to continue licking the Tootsie Roll Pop. This process is not completed quickly, and unlike Mr. Owl, if you resist crunching into the pop’s center before licking the outer covering, it could take a very long time to finish one of these suckers. And if you count your licks? Your mind becomes engaged in an activity on a whole new level. There was no way that I was going to weave off that roadway or struggle to keep me eyelids propped open. The Tootsie Roll Pop was a real Charm.

(I later used the Tootsie Roll Pop on subsequent all-night drives around North America, so it’s been solidly road-tested. I went out a couple days ago and purchased a whole bag, and noticed they’ve introduced a new flavor! Watermelon. The fun continues!)

Speaking of being charmed… it would be charming if you’d consider giving me a call this Thursday night sometime between 11pm and 10am EST. I will be trekking all night, by myself this time, to Destin, FL. Talking on the phone also works wonders when driving late at night, so long as you’re not in heavy traffic or winding mountains. So give me a call. I’ll let you know how the Tootsie Roll Pops are holding up. And I’ll owe you a favor someday. ;)