Something I Should Know About Myself - Chocolate and Not-Chocolate

There are two kinds of treats. Those that are chocolate - and those that are not chocolate. The ones in the former category are always superior to the ones in the latter category. I know this for a few reasons.

First, some days, I decide to eat a candy bar while I'm sitting at my desk at work. When I do this, I eat half of the candy bar, and save the other half for later.* Then, for the next several days, when I open my desk drawer (which is a somewhat rare event, as the stuff I actually need is piled all over my desk, rather than tucked away in the drawers) I get all excited that I have half a candy bar in there. Most of the time, I don't even eat it, because I think about how excited I will be the next time I find the candy bar, and I want to feel that thrill again.**

Second, whenever I eat something that is chocolate, I am happy. It doesn't even matter how much I eat. I am always happy. I do not feel this way when I eat other treats.

I tell you this all as background, and I'm writing it here as a reminder to myself, lest the events of yesterday not be repeated by me again.

Here's what happened.

I had a coupon for $5 of free stuff at CVS. Woohoo! I decided to go get myself 5 candy bars, because having 5 candy bars in my desk would be almost more awesome than I can imagine. Right? I mean, opening the desk drawer with half a candy bar is good, so FIVE must be amazing.

Unfortunately, I cannot report if it is amazing, because when I got to CVS, I saw an ad for Twizzlers. Two giant packages for $5.00. Coincidence? I don't think so. The fates were clearly telling me something. And I listened!

I was initially very excited about the thought of all that high fructose corn syrup pulsing through my veins, and reminded myself of the 3.5 miles I had run the night before, so I convinced myself I really, really should eat the Twizzlers.

I ate one. Meh. It was OK, but not that good.

So I ate another. That one also was not very good.

So I ate a third. And then I realized I felt horribly ill.

So here I am, with my two GIANT packages of Twizzlers and NO candy bar, and all I could think about was how awesome it would be to have a candy bar instead of the Twizzlers.

I foisted the Twizzlers off on my coworkers (who apparently love them because the entire bag was gone when I got to work this morning).

And then I resolved to write this little reminder to myself to never be tricked again into buying any treats that fall into the not chocolate category. They are terrible. They will bring you no happiness. They are definitely inferior to chocolate.

I won't even bother to open my desk drawer today because all I will think about is how I COULD still have 4.5 candy bars in there if I had done what I set out to do yesterday and purchased the candy bars. But instead? My drawer is void of chocolate.

*I should note here, that it was not until I was an adult that I realized eating half a candy bar is a ridiculously weird behavior. My sister does it, too, and because we spent a lot of time around each other during the formative years of our lives, we reinforced this weird behavior in each other and came to think of it as normal. I was sharing a beach house with friends one weekend about 10 years ago when someone noticed my half candy bar sitting around. They inquired whose it was, and Ed told them it had to be mine. How did he know? Because apparently I am the only person who eats only half the candy bar. The other people at the beach house then alerted me to the fact that this is an extremely weird behavior.

**This is probably also weird, but it produces a lot of happiness for me - way more than just eating the other half upon discovery.

Elaine