If there was one way (among the many, I assure you) that I was a strange child, it was that I didn’t like candy or sweets of almost any sort. Imagine that: a child who does not like sugar! My disdain for sugary goodness made me very popular with my friends come Halloween. Frankly, I was a sought-after companion because, although I didn’t like candy, I still liked (very much) trick-or-treating. The spoils, of course, were worthless to me, which meant I had a real bounty to unload at evening’s end, and my friends were always more than willing to ease that burden. Hungry to ease that burden, if you will.
My generosity came at a price, though: every penny they’d gotten in place of candy throughout the night.
To my friends, this was a sound investment. For 4 or 5 cents, they bought themselves pounds of candy. At those rates, I was almost better priced than a candy store in 1903. Of course, the trade wasn’t much in the way of fair for me, but a penny was a penny and could be saved, where a mini Snickers bar cannot. Moreover, saving pennies doesn’t rot your teeth.
I carried my dislike for candy, especially chocolate (devil’s gold, in my opinion), up through my teen years until I met my wife, and also her brother, who called Junior Mints “dinner” for the first 20 years of his life.
Little by little, either by osmosis or “Oh, just try it; you might like it,” I’ve developed my own sweet tooth, easily satiable as it might be. I still don’t hold candy or sweets in very high esteem. I don’t miss dessert if it’s not offered. And I’d rather seek comfort from a bag of potato chips than Bonbons.
However, and as they so often do, an addiction snuck up on me in the past couple years. You know, first it’s a taste, and then it’s a gulp. Only in my case, first it’s a bite, and then it’s the bag. Well, somewhere along the way, I developed a weakness for Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms, and it’s as surprising to me as waking up with a third arm.
It started two summers ago, when my wife brought home a bag, like Eve and her apple. And I’ve been living in chocolate sin ever since. Although, if the bliss I find in every bag of Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms is any indication of what came after the temptation in Eden, then I’m not sure what all the fuss is about, because as far as I’m concerned, Utopia is the beginning of a new bag, and Hell is what you find when the M&Ms are all gone.
Which is why I try my hardest to keep an inexhaustible supply at the ready.
I can eat an entire 12.60 oz bag in practically one sitting if I could live with myself after or not feel like I needed to tuck myself away in a closet or something while I binge. My low point came a year ago, when I ate an entire 48.4 oz bag in little over three days. Shameful, I know.
Never in my life—until I made friends with the animated Red and Yellow characters—did the candy aisle in a store call to me so. Now, it’s like a siren song beckoning me to the sweet rattle of 2 for $5.
And now it is me who calls a bag of M&Ms breakfast.
