I'm gonna tell you something tooth-rottingly cute. One time at fencing practice I got a terrible headache and a fellow knight gave me a little vitamin C candy, one of those you buy in 10-packs, fruit-flavored and kinda crunchy. I don't think it did anything for the headache but it did make me feel very cared for, so next day I bought some candy of my own to carry in my backpack. I already carry various common meds and band-aid everywhere, so I figured candy would be useful too.
Do you know how happy grown men and women get when you offer them a little candy? Knights love my candy (#mycandy). Now I carry two-three packs at all times because I never know how many people will show up for practice and I want to treat everyone.
My friend Ryuk looked at me like "👁️_👁️" the first time I offered him one on our way home, on the trolley. I gave him the pack and asked him to share with the rest of the fencers - they were standing a little too far from me but he's got arms so long he could hug ten people at once if he wanted to - and I expected the pack to just kind of jump hands, as things do, but Ryuk took it upon himself to distribute one (1) candy to each knight, and every time they'd thank him, he'd point to me so that everybody knew it was mine, in the way of credit. Also off-topic but check out Ryuk's music, he's the drummer in a band and it sounds wicket awesome. Ryuk is a bro and always looks confused as hell when I offer him candy but always takes one.
Another fencer is such a big fan of #mycandy that he does a little hop-hop-hop every time he sees me open a pack. The other day he was really upset for various halberd-related reasons, and I couldn't think of a way to cheer him up, but his face brightened instantly at the sight of my silly little vitamin candy. We call them "vitaminki" (#myvitaminki)
One time a girl fencer I'm friends with told me she wasn't feeling well, and just as she asked if I had any of #mycandy I pulled out a pack. I felt like one of those dads that keep a 4x5x1 wooden brick in their storage room waiting for ten years to use it on one extremely specific thing and then transcending directly into heaven.
When they were putting up a festival, walking around in wool in the middle of a hot sunny day, I showed up with my pockets full of candy. Treated everyone. They laughed about it but gathered around me like fireflies. Lady coach was standing a little further away and didn't see what I was passing around, so she got a little concerned with their enthusiasm. She likes candy too though. Everybody likes candy.
A fencer asked me "Are you supposed to suck on it or swallow it or what?" I said "Just chew it, it's candy!" and he said "Ooooooooooh!!!"
A fencer accidentally tore the pack a little bit as he was trying to get a candy out, held two tiny pieces of plastic wrap in his giant hand and said "I'll throw them away myself, don't worry", unaware that there is so much candy wrap in my pockets I could make a little boat out of it and float away.
My newest source of joy has been stocking different flavors and offering a random knight to pick. I usually get orange and strawberry since they seem to be the most popular flavors. Especially strawberry, though I personally prefer orange. It goes like this: I'll pull a half-empty pack out of my pocket, most of the knights will get candy, the ones that don't will see that they finished the pack and shrug, thinking there's no more candy. Then I'll pull out two different unopened packs from my backpack and ask one of them to pick a flavor. They always spend a few seconds thinking about it excitedly, like kids before blowing out candles on a birthday cake.
My latest plans are getting some lemon candy to try out and maybe stocking some more because the good candy is only sold at one specific store. I started offering it to people everywhere at various occasions and it's never not been met with delight. Every time someone asks me for an ibuprofen, I offer a candy to go with it. Once my little sister scraped her knee and stopped crying only when I offered her candy. Another time a girl asked for a kind of medicine I didn't have on me, I said sorry and offered a candy as consolation, and she found it so delightful she forgot about her pain for a while.
The moral is that it's very hard for me to figure out socially nuanced ways to cheer people up, so I found a foolproof loophole that I will keep abusing until the end of time.
