What've You Got in that Bag?

Years ago, I went to see a play "The Curse of the Starving Class" at Sac State with my boyfriend Mez. I was quite ill with bronchitis, but I really wanted to go, because my dear friend Dan was in it and so was my former drama teacher, George Roth. Rather than stay home and recuperate from a respiratory illness that was bordering on walking pneumonia, I took a bottle of codeine cough syrup to sip from quietly, so I wouldn't disturb the audience by coughing. These were the types of decisions I made in my twenties. 

Anyway, when we got there, Mez said, "Uh-oh." A friend of his sister's, let's call her Cynthia, was at the play. She hated me, because she asked Mez out on a date about seven minutes after he and I started going out, so she felt like I had stolen him from her. She also hated me because I had been in a class with her in junior college, and I guess I was annoying, according to what she told Mez's sister, who told Mez, who then told me. This stressed me out. I couldn't even remember her, so I couldn't judge if maybe I had done something awful, which would make me terrible, or if I wasn't so bad, in which case she was unreasonable and maybe I wasn't so terrible. These were the types of things that bothered me in my twenties. 

The play started and all I remember about it is that George and Dan were really good and that I was desperately suppressing coughs and swilling opiate cough syrup. Also, there was full frontal nudity by a guy in the cast (not George or Dan) and there was simulated pissing. Bet you haven't seen that. 

So, after the play, I ran up to Dan and hugged him because I wanted to get away from Cynthia's dislike, and after chatting briefly, he said there was a girl in the audience who hated him, because she had asked out his boyfriend Joe, and Joe had told her he was gay and dating Dan. Of course, it was Cynthia. So, now I was the person who had stolen Mez and I was happily hugging the man she had just found out had stolen Prospect #2 from her, like, the night before. 

I fled outside. George Roth was out there, talking to people. He had an opaque white paper bag, the size of a lunch bag, in his hands. Rather desperately, I said, jokingly, "What've got in that ba-a-a-ag? TOOTSIE POPS?" 

George looked at me with a pleased expression. He reached into the bag and withdrew...a Tootsie Pop. He unwrapped it deliberately, showed it to me pointedly, put it in his mouth, nodded, and walked slowly away.