I Spy With My Little Eye Sweet Sales

I’m going to play a simple game of “I spy” with you now. “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with S A A U E F S S E T W D N T A T S R O W T J S A T I I T J W H E B T S C H A”. Got it yet? Here’s the answer, ready or not.

Seniors are always unfairly excluded from sweet sales even though we do not take all the sweets regardless of what the juniors say and that it is the juniors who hog everything before the seniors can have anything.

Did you manage to work out the incredibly long answer? If so, well done, have one lolly. You may have also worked out my subject for today’s column – sweet sales and their injustices.

I remember when I was a tiny little girl in the juniors, sweet sales would appear every few months. I was never involved with the sweet sales. No one ever asked. The only time I was involved, the idea never left planning stage. I was never really upset I hadn’t helped organise it. It wasn’t, to me, a big deal. But I always had a feeling that asked me, “Why do I never become involved in sweet sales?” Nor did I ever buy anything from such sales – I always forgot to bring money to school. Even when someone threw me 5 pence one time it wasn’t enough.

Of course, as I progressed up the school, I started to discover there were less and less sweets to be bought. Due to the popular nature of sweet sales, years used to take their turn to buy the sweets, starting from Year 3 and going up to Year 6. That was always the order – unless the people running the sweet sale in question decided to reverse the order.

In Year 3, sweet sales are always heaven galore – there are so many sweets laid on the table you don’t know what to go for. Should I take the flying saucers, should I buy some of those candy necklaces and watches, or should I pick the Haribos and Moa Stripes? There is an endless amount of sweets and buy, and it would never hurt to take a few more. In Year 4, it is just the same as Year 3, except now there’s a gaping hole which the Year 3s have left. And when you are in Year 5, half the sweets are gone. Still, it doesn’t matter, there is so much more sweets for you to feast upon. When you reach Year 6, with your stomach growling for sweets, you discover a threadbare bench with a few near-empty containers that once held sweets full to the brim.

And it only gets worse. Come senior school and all of a sudden all the posters advertising sweet sales say “Juniors only” or “No seniors allowed”. Why are we given this sudden injustice? What had we done to offend the juniors?

I soon found the reason to those questions. A classmate (whose name I will not mention) added to the on-going debate of sweet sales, “The juniors claim the seniors take everything and leave nothing for them”. Well excusez-moi, I don’t think so! Juniors go first in lunch before seniors, so they go first in sweet sales. If Year 6s are left with almost absolutely nil, what are we left with?

So, my point is this – if you are a junior organising a sweet sale, please, for the love of God, think about the seniors and do us older girls (and/or boys) a mighty big favour.