Chomp!

By Ron Aiken
January 24, 2014

Love in the Time of Chocolate

So we’re not there yet but we almost are, and it’s time to face some facts.

How is it, and why is it, that just ONE MONTH after we’re supposed to have begun to sustain a regimen of responsible diet and exercise that BIG CHOCOLATE sinks its claws into our natal rhythm once again, forcing us to eat our stomachs sick with sweets after we’ve just begun to have success denying ourselves those very torments? And really, didn’t we JUST do this mass national chocolate force-feeding in the name of dead people a couple months ago? And now it’s supposed to be because of love?

We’ve equated chocolate with death and the occult, now we’re to equate chocolate with the living and love…I mean, what could Big Chocolate possibly associate itself with next? God himself? The resurrection of Christ our Lord? As if, right!

I bring this up now because I’m tired of being a victim, and I won’t be silent. Because even though the day is a bit off, we’re already under sensory assault at our grocery stores, our pharmacies, our own life-giving televisions. Sure, I can tell myself in the safety of my vehicle in the parking lot of Walgreens that yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the candy aisle, I will fear no chocolate-covered cherry. But I do fear that cherry, because I will by that cherry, I will eat that cherry and I will stretch my stomach with a box of those cherries because they cast a spell over me I am powerless to prevent.

If you give me this poison, I will eat this poison. All day, every day.

People try to play Valentine’s Day off as a greeting card-sponsored holiday, but don’t buy that. Hallmark isn’t the devil here – they do just fine with your graduations, your birthdays, your anniversaries, your get-well-soons, your sorry-grandma-but-you’re-moving-to-a-nursing-home-today cards. They’re recession proof, they’re season-proof, and they don’t need gimmicks.

No, it’s Big Chocolate we’re up against here, and to them, nothing is sacred – not God, not love, not the living, not the dead. They want your soul, and once they have it, you’re doomed to an eternity of reincarnation as a left or right Twix bar (depending on how good you were), Almond Joy (if you’re lucky) or, God forbid, as a Tootsie Roll, that sticky, glutenous blob of chocolate-colored tar that’s almost literally the bottom of the barrel of the chocolate world. Tell me you’ve EVER felt good about eating one afterward, and I’ll tell you you sicken me with your lies!

We’re under assault, people, and the enemy wears a dark-chocolate hat. He packs Skor bars, slings Snickers and milks your life from you one Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup at a time. You think you’re slick getting the King Size Snickers or Reese’s? You sad fool. There are no winners when you slide that Milky Way on the conveyor belt at Publix as if you just thought of it at that moment. It’s like the alcoholic who, when the bartender comes around and asks if he wants another beer, pretends to give it some hard thought, pretends really to consider the question of whether to order one or not before being deciding he’ll go ahead and take just that one more, for now.

If you’re honest with yourself, you knew you were getting that Toblerone before you even left the house. You can pretend you just thought of it in the checkout aisle, but we know the truth, don’t we? You probably rationalized that you even deserve it right? I mean, who could blame you, after the day you had? With all the hard work you’ve done lately? With the world in such a state?

We’re three weeks away from V-Day, and I’m ALREADY two chocolate-covered cherries and two creme-filled chocolate hearts (they were two-for-$1!!!!) into this madness. I know I will have more, just as I know I am powerless over chocolate, that it makes my tummy unmanageable. I can rail, I can rant, I can scream for God to descend from the Heavens with reinforcements, but deep down, I know the battle with Big Chocolate has long, long been lost. And secretly, like you, I love it.

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