Well, if I’m being honest, this was inspired by two very weird but unrelated incidents.
Strip 1: Hard candies I loved as a kid came in a round tin about the size of a coffee cup and were dusted with some sort of fine, soft sugar. I know you’re thinking of La Vie Pastillines; mais non, vous vous trompez. They weren’t French or chic, if you can expect that of hard candy, but there was just something about them I couldn’t quite put my finger on. And then, one day, while she was visiting, I made the connection! They tasted just like my grandma smelled! (To be fair, she did smell like roses, too).
Strip 2: I went to a two week summer camp when I was 13. When my parents picked me up on the last day, I expected a happy reunion and all sorts of questions, but they were strangely quiet on the way home. Ah, home! My bedroom! Such a welcome sight after two weeks of cabin bunks, outhouses, and mosquitoes! Huh, I thought, when entering my room. It’s remarkably cleaner than I left it. Nice of them to spruce it up a bit for my return. Then my parents came in, dark-faced. “Do you know,” my father said, “what your mother and I found under your bed?” I refer you to the last panel of Strip 2*.
*Evidently, I’d forgotten about a bowl of Cap’n Crunch I meant to take downstairs. Yes, you can make that face.