I am powerless in the presence of chocolate. I have been since childhood. I know for a fact that I could never be a superhero; I grow weak just thinking about chocolate.
One Lenten season in my youth, I elected to make the ultimate sacrifice. I announced to my family that I was giving up chocolate for Lent. I told myself it would only be for forty days. I could live for forty days without chocolate. Forty days isn’t such a long time.
Oh, please.
It seems I was deceiving myself, because here’s the reality check. Forty days without chocolate is a long time. Forty days without chocolate feels like an eternity. Forty days without chocolate stretches out to infinity and beyond.
You may be curious to know if I lasted the entire forty days. Take a wild guess. You don’t have to? Right. You know I didn’t make it to the finish line. I won’t risk telling you how short a time I managed to hang in there. If I did, you would lose all respect for me.
At times, chocolate kryptonite makes me lose all respect for myself. A classic example: The Peculiar Case of the Vanishing Chocolate Easter Eggs.
The peculiar circumstance occurred when my sons were much younger. After spring break, when Firstborn and his Baby Brother were still in grade school, they arrived home to find that their chocolate Easter bunnies mysteriously lost a few inches in height. It appeared as if someone (I confess; it was yours truly.) had bitten off their ears. I had no shame. I threw their pet Labrador retriever under the bus. The Lovable Lab was known to filch unguarded snacks at every opportunity. Lovable Lab was a convenient fall guy. Firstborn was skeptical; Baby Brother was still too young and trusting to catch on.
Before he left for school the following morning, Firstborn took out a ruler and measured both chocolate bunnies. Then he took both baskets from the dining room table and hid them. Ouch. That stung. How had it come to this? I hung my head and vowed never again to mooch their candy.
After the boys left for school, I went down to the lower level and got the laundry started. When I came back upstairs, I stopped short at the top of the landing. What on Earth? My nice clean floor was a mess. Little pieces of colored foil were scattered everywhere—in the foyer, the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and down the hallway to the bedrooms. I followed the trail of foil debris; it led me to an open closet in Firstborn’s bedroom. The Easter baskets were in disarray on the floor of that closet. All the foil-covered chocolate Easter eggs were gone. Uh-Oh.
The Lovable Lab came up behind me, grimacing and sticking out his tongue as if he were trying to spit something out. I grabbed him by the muzzle, opened his mouth and found little pieces of foil clinging to his larcenous tongue. Eww. One look at that foil-covered tongue and the baskets it assaulted, and it didn’t take the CSI team to deduce the identity of the perpetrator and what took place at the scene of the crime. Unlike the CSIs, however, I didn’t preserve the evidence or the crime scene. I cleaned it up. I picked every last shred of foil off that sloppy tongue—ugh—and tossed it out. Then I followed the trail of foil from room to room with my vacuum cleaner.
I suppose Firstborn thought he was very clever in hiding the Easter baskets on the floor inside his closet. He must have been very sure I wouldn’t go anywhere near his closet because the last time I did, I found a baggie containing an aging half sandwich coated with blue, green and grey fuzz. (Firstborn didn’t want me to know that he didn’t eat all of his lunch, so he brought the half sandwich home and hid it in his closet. Thank heaven it didn’t attract rodents or insects. Had it remained in there any longer, I suspect it would have fossilized. 🙂
Firstborn was careless in hiding the baskets; he didn’t take care to close the louvered doors tightly. Lovable Lab the Snack Filcher sniffed out the baskets, pushed the louvered doors open with his muzzle, and looted the unprotected baskets. He gobbled up all the foil-covered chocolate eggs—foil and all—and then spit out pieces of pulverized foil on his merry intra-house journey.
I couldn’t help feeling guilty over the loss of the foil covered chocolate eggs. I knew it wouldn’t have happened if the boys believed they could trust me with their chocolate bunnies and other candy while they were in school. It wasn’t easy to break the news to Firstborn and Baby Brother that the Lovable Lab found and ate their candy, and that their baskets would have been safer had they remained on the dining room table out of the Lovable Lab’s reach.
They both stared at me as if I had grown an extra eye in the middle of my forehead.Firstborn was the first to fling an accusation. “No, he didn’t; you did, Mom! You ate them. Just like you ate our chocolate bunnies.”
Baby Brother chimed in. “Yeah, Mommy; it was you.”
Too late, I realized I shouldn’t have cleaned up after the Lovable Snack-Filching Lab. The evidence that would have exonerated me was inside my vacuum cleaner. “You have to believe me. I’m telling you the truth. The dog ate them—with the foil still on them. He spit out the foil all over the house and I had to clean it up. I even had to pick the foil off his tongue. Smell his breath if you don’t believe me. You can smell the chocolate.”
Firstborn rolled his eyes at me. “We know you did it, Mom. You should be ashamed of yourself, blaming the dog. I’m telling Dad when he gets home.”
Baby Brother nodded in agreement. “Shame on you, Mommy.”
After I vowed never to mooch their chocolate again, there I stood, accused, tried and convicted of that very crime, a crime I didn’t commit. My pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears all because of my unsavory past as the family chocolate thief. The injustice of it all pained me. I glanced over at the real culprit—the Lovable Lab lying on the floor wagging his tail so hard it made loud thumping noises when it hit the floor.
I got the distinct impression that the Lovable Lab was enjoying my predicament. In fact, I thought he looked pleased—almost smug—and he didn’t seem all that lovable anymore. I wondered if he was trying to tell me something—something like: Serves you right for throwing me under the bus yesterday, Mom. Guess we’re even now. Right. More than even, I believe.
Now see if you can guess whether Macho Guy believed me when he came home from work that night . . .