I'm about 4 here, but you get the gist of what 3 year old Courtney looked like. I'm holding my very tolerant cat, Smudgie.

When I was 3 years old, I did something very, very bad. Lets take a trip back in time, shall we? It was a few days after Christmas and I was super jealous of what one of my sister's gave the other sister: a shoebox full of all of her favorite candies. My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree (pun intended) when my sis opened the lid for the first time. It was like this forbidden treasure that I wanted in a bad way. My sister's knew this of course, so they decided to keep this box o' heaven well out of my T-Rex 3 year old reach: on top of their bedroom bookshelf. You know, it would have been a great hiding place if I didn't see where it lived whenever they generously shared a piece of candy with me. Suckers.

A couple days later, when they were babysitting me and my bro, I gingerly (pun intended) snuck away with one thing in mind: IT'S CANDY O'CLOCK! I don't know how I did it, but I scaled that bookshelf like a ninja and snagged that shoebox like it was nobody's business. After making my way back to solid ground, I bolted to my bedroom, dove under the bed and settled in for a nice little snack. When my sisters noticed I was missing, they started looking and calling for me for the next hour. They passed my room several times, but I wasn't about to reveal my hiding place and what I was up to. My sister's recall this next part very clearly. When they walked past my room at one point, they heard a tiny voice call out "the laaaaaasst one!" They looked under my bed and I was popping the last candy in my mouth while sitting in a sea full of candy wrappers. They were both a tornado of anger, to put it lightly.

I'm just now having this realization, well over a decade later, MAN do I owe my sister a shoebox full of her favorite candies. Alas, Christmas isn't too far away, is it? Too soon?

Dessert Fiend