Jelly Beans

I figure some of you probably still have some hanging around after Easter.  Growing up, I was never fond of them.  They  tasted like someone had captured all of the excitement of pastels, and then put it in a chewy/crunchy candy.  Who was making them before Jelly Belly came around?  Probably the same people who made candy corn.  I just remembered that I tried to avoid all of them, but especially the black ones.  You didn't want to go near the black ones. While I'm still not a huge fan, there are some Jelly Belly flavors that I like, perhaps even go out of my way to get.

Here is a wonderful sentence from a short story by Harlan Ellison, called "Repent Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman.  It gives me a new appreciation for the confection.

Jelly beans!  Million and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin workers, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness.  Jelly beans!