“Eat Life Savers NOW!” an old man told me. The number of his years was not big but he was definitely old. He went on to say, “The red ones were my favorite but they don’t taste good any more. When I was little just one, of any color, was like having heaven in my mouth. Sometimes they were gotten soggy on the inside and fuzzy outside with lint from my mother’s coat pocket. But even then nothing in the world was as wonderful. But now I can eat them all day long and I can’t taste them.”
When my daughter was about four years old she had the answer to his dilemma. I recorded her philosophy in my children’s picture book, “Dragon’s Tale” where Anna told her brother that her dragon was six.
From Paul’s blanket tent he called out, “Yesterday you said she was twenty-six.”
Anna always had an answer, “Weeell, she was. And now she’s growing down. She was born in an egg then she grew up to first grade size, then to mommy size, then down to grandma size, and then to all the kid sizes again. Up and down, like everybody grows.”
Maybe too many hot drinks killed my old friend’s taste buds or perhaps finding faults all day long dulled his senses but I’m guessing if an old man could sit still with himself he could again taste Life Savers and learn to love the green ones too.  nancymauerman.com