The eternal conundrum of tuck

Tuck....have to admit, the word still stirs a little excitement in me. The idea that once a week I will be treated to a veritable feast of sugar and artificial flavours still massages the pleasure centres of my brain. In hindsight, one of the things that makes me smile about tuck was that it was indexed to the rate of inflation. I think it was 50 cents a week when I was a resident of Bears Claw. By the time I was an awkward teenager in the Swamp, it had risen to about $1.75 (though have to admit by that point the fascination with tuck was starting to wane thanks to hormones and an increasing interest in girls, booze and music). Despite the over 100% mark up in my tuck allowance, it always seemed to buy about the same amount of 'stuff'.

Which brings me to the central philosophical question regarding tuck: was it better to spend your tuck money on a lot of small priced commodities, such as black balls and bazooka joes, or go for the big ticket items such as a kit kat and soda? Alas, the elemental conundrum: is it better to go for quantity or quality? The quantity school of thought suggests that by buying the small items, you can make it last, almost until the next time you go for tuck. In this sense, tuck is like crack, judiciously spreading out your stash until your next fix. Sure the stuff you get isn't as wonderful as a whole chocolate bar or a bag of chips, but at least its still tuck, and can provide a daily alternative to the fruit salads and custard cups that constituted deserts at Kawabi. In the quality school, the idea is that tuck is only a temporary treat or snack. It will be gone before too long, so why not give yourself a real treat and go for the decidedly nice items, the ones you would have down in the city and would buy with your allowance back home. I mean outside of Halloween, who the hell would buy those cheap, tiny plastic wrapped sour tarts on purpose. And is it worth getting blackballs, which I always thought had the taste of industrial waste, or some other penny candy that had a flavour only slightly removed from chalk, just so you can get some slim facsimile of candy for more than one day?

Truth be told, I started out camp life in the quantity school, but as I got older and my taste for sugar-related items became more refined, I first tried to compromise the two, and then finally by my second year in B8, I'd get a coke and bag of chips to eat once decamped at the outsupper or overnight site. I guess by that point, the shiny gleam of tuck had faded. Ironically, this same kind of thought process and development has been mirrored in my approach to buying wine over the years (when I was younger, it was all about the huge cheap bottles of paint thinner with twist off caps; now I'd actually rather buy a nice expensive bottle of Amarone). In the end, I think that you could tell a lot about someone's personality buy what and how much tuck they got. Got to admit, it makes ya think.