Tag Archives: M&Ms

Who hates chocolate?

One of my really good friends hates chocolate. Whatever, to each his own, right? But I couldn’t stand it, I don’t know why but it drove me nuts, every time I’d be eating snacks, like chocolate covered raisins or Hershey’s kisses, I’d be like, “Hey man, you want some candy?” and he’d ask, “What kind of candy?” and I’d remember that he always asks this, because he hates chocolate, and we’d go through the same old song and dance, me eating chocolate, him saying, “No thanks, I hate chocolate.”

skittles mms

Who hates chocolate? Who hates anything that bad, to choose to completely abstain one hundred percent? It’s like, I don’t really care for cucumbers. It’s not that I dislike them, but they’re just kind of a pointless food, pretty flavorless, they’ve got those mushy seeds, the skin makes a squeaking noise on my teeth. Whenever I cook, I rarely use cucumbers. But if you give me a salad, I’m not going to go picking them out. I’ll just eat it.

And besides, chocolate’s great, one of the shining achievements that defines us as a species. Doesn’t anybody remember second grade social studies? They talk about the Incas or the Aztecs, I can’t remember, but they figured out how to turn cacao into chocolate, it’s a pretty hard process, you have to separate the seeds, leave them to dry and ferment in the sun, crack them open and separate the solids from the oils. Who thought to do that? They attributed it as a gift from the gods.

If God gave me a box of chocolates, I wouldn’t say, “No thanks G, I don’t like chocolate,” no, I’d learn to like chocolate. It’s great, dark chocolate, Milky Way bars, I like all chocolate, the way it melts in my mouth while providing the satisfaction of having eaten something of substance. If there’s one junk food that I could eat as a meal, it would definitely be chocolate.

So I decided to see if my friend really didn’t like chocolate, or if he was just saying that he didn’t like chocolate. Like maybe it was one of those early repressed childhood memories, like he was enjoying some chocolate one day and then two seconds later he got bit a spider, and because he was so little, his brain couldn’t separate the two events, and he grew up convinced that chocolate was to blame, that he couldn’t explain why, but whenever he thought about eating chocolate, his skin started to tingle, like a hundred invisible tiny spiders were crawling across his skin.

That made sense to me, my theory, and so I decided to help undo the damage. I bought a big bag of Skittles and poured them into a bowl. “Hey man,” I called him over, “I got Skittles.” He was like, “Thanks dude, I love Skittles,” and he started grabbing them by the handful and shoving them into his mouth.

My plan was working. Unbeknownst to him, I had secretly mixed in a small amount of M&Ms. Just a few thrown in, just enough to make sure that he’d definitely eat at least one or two. And wouldn’t you know it? He didn’t say a word. Not at any point did he stop his chewing, roll his tongue around the inside of his mouth and say, “Hey Rob, are there any chocolates in these Skittles?” No, he finished the whole bowl.

I figured I’d best stick with the plan for a while, gradually increasing the amount of M&Ms until there’d be no way for him to escape the reality that for however long I’d been providing him with free Skittles, he had been eating and enjoying the hidden M&Ms.

This went on for weeks. Finally, I was at the point where there were more M&Ms than Skittles, and so I was about to let it out, the big reveal. “Hey, there’s something I wanted to tell you.”

“Yeah Rob, there’s something I wanted to tell you also,” he interrupted as he poured another fistful of candy into his open mouth, “I just wanted to say that I appreciate how nice you’ve been to me lately, always buying me candy, I know it’s not a huge deal, but it’s a nice gesture on your part, always lifting my spirits with a huge bowl of Skittles.”

“Yeah don’t mention it,” I replied, “What I wanted to tell you was …”

“It’s just that,” he continued, “You’ve been so great to me, all the free candy and everything, and I feel like I’ve been such a mope, just kind of hanging out, eating candy, not really expressing exactly how happy you’ve made me. You see, and I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this, I’ve kept it a secret for so long, but I have no sense of taste whatsoever. I can’t taste anything. I don’t like or dislike any type of food at all, and it’s incredibly frustrating, not being able to share in the joy of a good meal or a midafternoon snack.”

I looked at him, “But what about the whole …”

“The chocolate thing?” he knew where I was going, “That’s just a story. I’m actually really, severely allergic to chocolate. And so instead of getting into the whole no taste thing, I just tell everyone that I hate chocolate. I hate having to constantly ask, but I feel like people would understand the no chocolate thing as opposed to me getting into the whole inability to taste. I don’t want pity. I don’t want people to not enjoy their food in front of me. It’s just an awkward situation and I get pretty down about it.”

“So the Skittles?”

“Well, it was nice to be able to enjoy a snack without having to ask about chocolate, to appreciate a simple act of kindness on your part without having to make a big deal about it.”

“Well why don’t you just tell everyone that you’re allergic to chocolate.”

“Because I don’t want people to go out of their way to make non-chocolate stuff for me, because I can’t taste it, and so what’s the point? They’ll probably get upset, like I’m being ungrateful, when it’s not true at all. Sometimes it’s really hard to fake the level of enthusiasm necessary to express appreciation for a specially made chocolate-free dessert. It’s just much easier to be a little standoffish about the whole thing.”

I felt terrible. But I also felt vindicated. Because seriously, nobody hates chocolate. Chocolate’s delicious. A chocolate allergy, I guess it sounds possible. But my friend didn’t look like he was allergic to chocolate. Maybe he was mistaken about that also. “So, how are you feeling?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said, “For the past week or so I’ve been having a lot of trouble swallowing, taking really deep breaths. It’s almost like … It’s almost … It’s …”

And then he looked me right in the eye, and I couldn’t tell in that moment if he knew or not, if he even suspected that I’d been spiking his Skittles. But there was definite eye contact, for a moment, he saw into me, into my eyes, we were locked. I think he did figure it out, in that last second he knew just what I had been up to, but he couldn’t do anything about it, because he couldn’t spit out his words, he was struggling, choking. He raised a hand up in the air as if to accuse me, but then his other hand clutched his throat, and then he dropped dead, falling headfirst into the coffee table, right into that big bowl of half Skittles, half M&Ms.

I’m still eating Halloween candy. Somebody help me, please.

This year for Halloween I bought a bunch of candy in case any trick-or-treaters came by. But not even one showed up. So now I’m stuck with all of these bags of candy, which I tried to resist at first, but by now I’ve given in, and I’m just constantly eating candy, waiting for it to run out so that my brain stops bothering me every ten seconds, whispering stuff in my ear like, “Hey Rob, so, uh … how about some more candy?” And it’s such a strong craving I’ll taste it in my mouth, I’ll want it so badly, and I’ll cave to the temptation almost immediately.

I haven’t eaten this much candy in a while. In fact, I don’t think I’ve eaten any candy in a while. So I’m having like a mini candy renaissance. I pick out four big bags of fun sized treats. They looked pretty harmless when they were still packaged behind all of that clear plastic. I wasn’t yet feeling any appeal. But then I decided, what the hell, it’s just going to sit there. I might as well have one piece of candy, two tops.

And then I opened that first bag. It was a variety pack, a mix of Milky Ways, Twix, Snickers, and Three Musketeers. As soon as I split open the plastic I was overcome with the actual sensation of being a little kid again. I was instantly transported back to my childhood, canvassing the neighborhood on Halloween for candy, and saving that candy for weeks. It was that scent of assorted chocolates and candy bars. It was the smell of Halloween.

I hadn’t even popped anything in my mouth yet and I was already feeling way more excited than I had anticipated. Any ideas about having just one or two were replaced by having to try out at least one of each variety. I picked out a Milky Way and ate it. I’m telling you, that one bite completely altered the trajectory of my whole day. I was flooded with energy. It tasted so good, even better than I remember it tasting when I was a little kid. It was too much, I started making fists and jumping up and down really quickly. I didn’t want it to stop, so I went straight for the Twix. It was the same reaction. No wait, it was even better. The effect was amplified. I turned around in a couple of circles, the energy was overwhelming. One after the other, each flavor tasted better than the last. And even better, and totally unexpected, Milky Way Dark, which I never liked as a little kid, it now tasted incredible, delicious.

I went through like fifteen pieces of candy in under a minute. And then I started feeling a little worried, because I knew somewhere in my mind that eating that much candy isn’t really the best thing to do for your body. I gave myself a minute to let my brain catch up to my taste buds. Sure enough, the euphoria was very fleeting, and once I started to get my feet to stop jumping up and down, I realized that my tongue felt a little raw. Worse, I was actually sort of full, in a weird gross way, and it especially sucked because I had just ordered some dinner, and I think I might have spoiled my appetite.

But yeah, over the course of a day or two I made quick work of that variety pack. And I told myself, just don’t open the other bags. Just keep it in check, keep it together Rob. I think I kept it in check for maybe a day. And then I opened up the Kit Kats. This was really disappointing actual, because, and I didn’t even realize it until after I had opened up the first Kit Kat, instead of using chocolate, they used orange dyed white chocolate, I guess for some sort of a Halloween theme. Gross. I tried to just close my eyes and pretend that it was the original, but unlike my experience with Milky Way Dark, a candy I hated as a child but now liked as an adult, unfortunately my sense of taste remained unmoved by white chocolate. It tastes like eggs or something. I can’t really describe it except to repeat again that it’s gross.

That’s still sitting there, untouched. I’ll probably have to just eventually throw it out at some point. I think I’m going to throw it out right now just so I don’t have to look at it anymore. But I’m halfway through a giant bag of Peanut M&Ms. There’s still an unopened sack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I can’t take this anymore. Now it’s all becoming so compulsory. Every time I’m bored, every minute or so, I get up and eat a bag of M&Ms. My teeth are starting to hurt. I haven’t eaten an apple in like two weeks.

And you know what I think a big part of the problem is? Fun size. To what psychopath does a bag containing six M&Ms seem like a fun size? That’s not a fun size. A fun size is one of those party bags of M&Ms, where there’s no individual packs, just tons of loose M&Ms, like you fill up a whole bowl with them and put that bowl out at a party. That’s always the best, going to a party where there’s a giant bowl of unwrapped candy, because nobody ever goes for it. Nobody except me, I hit it really early in the night. After a while my fingers are all stained red and blue and it’s clear to everyone that I’ve made it my personal candy bowl. Still, I always get a stomachache from that much candy.

Fun size. Come on, it’s a trick. If they were packaged as regular sized packs of candy, I guarantee you I would only eat one. But because they are so little, so comically small, there’s no way I’m going to stop at just one. So I’ll just keep going, little by little, slowly getting into the double digits until next thing I know, I’ve just eaten a pound of M&Ms without even realizing the magnitude of what I’ve done. That’s not fun. Nothing that small is fun. Just call it small size. Or tease sized. Actually, you know what would be a really fun size? Like a swimming pool, an Olympic sized pool filled to the brim with Peanut M&Ms. And I’d climb up to the diving board and execute a perfect dive, face down, mouth open, just totally submerged in Peanut M&Ms. I could eat all of them, without stopping, I don’t have any doubt. That would be a really fun size.