I bought a candy bar yesterday. Hershey with Almonds, the regular size. It cost 62 cents, which didn't shock me too much -- I was much more obsessed with the 210 calories I was about to consume -- until I began contemplating the wrapper. The Hershey bars I remember came in foil wrappers with an outer sleever; this was sort of a candy bar onesie. Just as sanitary, probably more responsible in that it produces less trash, but . . .

And then I began to think: 62 cents! (with tax). Did I really used to buy candy bars for a nickel? Certainly, no more than a dime, and the big, big Butterfinger was a quarter. I bought these treats at what was then the Windsor Hills Pharmacy, which now has a different name and has taken over the little grocery store next door, the one where I saw Wes Unseld, then a Baltimore Bullets. Who became the Washington Bullets and then the Washington Wizards because "bullet" became a little loaded, given D.C.'s homicide rate.

We also went to Windsor Hills for snow balls, which we once made the mistake of calling snow cones, which prompted the terrifying counter woman, Elsie, to accuse us of being Southerners.

And then I was catapulted even further back in time, to our apartment in Virginia, where my sister and I sometimes found our father's leftover candybars. We were so well behaved that we would never dream of taking one from the drawer where they were kept, but if Daddy didn't finish one, it was fair game. Nothing ever tasted better than a few rectangles of contraband Mr. Goodbar, recovered from its foil wrapper.

Maybe that's why I miss the foil wrapper. No chance of leftovers when you can't wrap it up.