If you’re of a certain age, you’ve probably tried about a million times to answer that question. Good news: I’ve solved the question!

It takes exactly 903 licks to reach the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.

Does that sound excessive? Hmmmm, maybe it is. But that’s how long it took me.

Oh, I’m not actually talking about Tootsie Roll Pops. I’m using them as a deeply personal metaphor*.

I have spent a large portion of my life trying to get to the center of the Tootsie Roll Pop. Sometimes I’ve taken a couple of licks and, thinking I was ready, bitten through to the core only to discover there were some sharp pieces of hard candy scraping my tongue and cheeks. A couple of times I have skipped licking all together and just cracked the hard candy surface with my teeth. That hurt and I’m lucky I didn’t break a tooth in the process. Finally, and this is just embarrassing, I have licked and licked and then just given up completely and thrown out the Tootsie Pop.

It’s not clear what made this time different, but it has been. I haven’t given up. I pushed through and kept licking. I licked and licked. Even when I was tired and wanted to give up. When the going got tough, I got tougher.

And then this morning, I finally got to the Tootsie Roll center of the Tootsie Roll Pop.

Yay me!

* For all of my readers with your mind in the gutter, the Tootsie Roll Pop metaphor is not a sexual metaphor.

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