The Taffy Oracle
You find yourself in a hammock somewhere beachy and tropical, with palm trees swaying gently in the breeze and waves lapping in front of you. You’re enjoying yourself, taking your time, smiling up at the sun. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to be, and everywhere around you, other people are in their own hammocks doing the same. Leisure is the name of the day.
You know what would be really good right now, is the saltwater taffy you got at the gift shop before you headed down to the water. You take a piece out of the bag, its wax paper shining in the sunlight. It’s gotten a little softer in the heat and you unwrap it slowly to make sure the wax paper pulls away fully.
As you’re untwisting the wrapping, you hear the unmistakable sound of laughter. At first you think it’s someone in another hammock behind the next tree but it sounds too close, like it’s coming from right where you are. The laugh is light, airy, childlike, joyful. It makes you want to laugh, too. But where is it coming from?
You sit up a little straighter to locate the source of the laughter. And that’s when the ancient spirit of a piece of saltwater taffy springs up out of the wrapper in your hand, as cheery and as jolly as Christmas in July.
You have found the Taffy oracle, and it has a story to share with you today.
The Taffy oracle says:
What kind of tree could fit in the palm of your hand?
A palm tree!
Your sense of humor is unmatched. So many people live in so much seriousness, so much guardedness, so much somber, solemn, severe interactions with their own selves and the world around them. They are not very open to sweet surprise, to funny jokes, to pure silliness.
But the world is silly. It is silly. It is beautifully absurd. It is gorgeously unhinged. Nature itself delights in the strange, in the boisterous, in cackling laughter. The universe itself is a master of the unheard of, the laugh-out-loud bizarre, the just-because-it-can.
The world is laffy taffy and you are someone who leans in to see what the joke is inside. You know that if you let the assortment of sweet options that are available in life present themselves to you, that you will get to choose the one you want for the day with a giggle and a snort.
And so you have the candy tongue. You always have something witty to say, something to make yourself and others laugh. You see the absolute comedy in the things around you. You’re going to revel in frivolity simply because you can - and because, sometimes, it’s the last stand between enjoying the ride we call life and being swallowed whole by it.
So, what is most utilitarian, practical, and productive is not your primary concern. Delight is. You create it wherever you go, with a well-timed joke and a warm repartee that invites others to relax, too - because look how fun and funny! What a kick what a gas what a lark what a treat! It may have been that deep, but it was never that serious.
Taffy is not a practical food, at all. It’s not even practical as candy goes. It’s incredibly sticky, enough to cause problems with your dental work. There is no world where you eat taffy for anything but the sheer pleasure of it. It takes a ludicrously long time to eat a single piece. And it takes forever to make, too.
Almost 200 years ago, somebody really said: Let’s heat up sugar until it’s hard like a ball and then let’s stretch it. Let’s pull it and pull it and pull it. For like a really long time. In fact, people in those early days would host taffy pull parties. Whole evenings of fun, spent with friends and family, hanging around pulling taffy.
Taffy demands that you slow down and enjoy. That you let things stretch pleasantly like chewing time and evening activities and long, burning afternoons at the beach. That you worry less and smile more. It’s one reason every island-time, vacation-mind, fun-in-the-sun, salt-hair-don’t-care beach locale sells saltwater taffy.
Do you know why it’s even called saltwater taffy? Because that’s a laugh as well. Legend goes that in 1883, a taffy shop on the boardwalk in Atlantic City flooded and all of the taffy got soaked. A customer came in wanting to buy taffy and the shop owner told them that they were selling saltwater taffy.
It was a joke - made in the middle of a natural disaster, no less - and somehow it stuck. There is zero ocean water in saltwater taffy. Preposterous. Delightful. And a peak symbol of playful relaxation on beach vacations to this very day.
You, also, let the ironic become iconic. You let whimsy lead the way.
Whenever life starts to make things a little too serious, a little too weighty, a little too hard - you add levity to the situation. You bring the laughter, even if it’s through tears. You’re willing to be corny and elicit groans of stifled laughter from a previously gloomy room. Your sense of humor never misses - it pierces the most bummer mood in just the right way, every time.
You’re the one who’s going to say: Oh a palm tree can fit in your hand, that’s so funny and clever! Your mind never even goes to the more cynical: I don’t get it, a palm tree is way too big to ever fit in someone’s hand.
You never let the so-called reality ruin a good joke. Especially not when you know how many jokes reality has of its own.
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About the Artist
Bailey Lewis is a storyteller and interactive artist (MFA, University of South Carolina) who combines words, images, and reimagined materials to create unexpected story encounters where mystical collides with the everyday world. She is an award-winning and internationally published author whose stories have been featured in The Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Recently, her hybrid public art project, The Gumball Machine of Great Fortune, received a grant for its installation at ArtFields Festival 2026.
Visit the Bailey Sends Word Story Studio site for more about Bailey’s work.