The Language of Chocolate

Ahhhhhh, Halloween. What a great way to kick off the Holiday season. I loved it as a kid and love it still, as an adult. Maybe I love it more now. As a kid, it was just me, work'n for my haul. As a mom, I have three laborers. I mean....cute trick or treaters. Our trick or treat evenings were sprinkled with comments from me like "Hurry up, run! You don't have enough candy yet!" or "It's not that cold; you can keep going!" Yes, the child labor laws do not extend to trick or treating. Go out and round it up kids so there is plenty to share with mom.

Even when I have tried to resist the pull of the pillowcase full of snack size candy bars, I always give in. It's the variety that gets me. Not a whole bag of just Snickers or Almond Joys, but Three Musketeers and Milkyways and Milk Duds and Hersey bars and M&M's....excuse me, I'm feeling faint. And I am blessed (or cursed) with two children who don't care for chocolate. Score! Enough choclolate for two chocoholics (my oldest son and me!)

One year I asked my Honey to take the candy to work with him. It must have been a year I was dieting. I still shake my head in amazement at that man. The man who could load his car up with three pillowcases full of candy and not be tempted to pull over at the first parking lot and work his way through it all. How do some people do it? Why does candy not have the same power over them as it does on me? Do they not speak "chocolate"? If it is in the house I hear it calling me. Sometimes I can hear it all the way from the grocery store.

The power to resist that call is in my gene pool; I just didn't get it. My dad would get cherry cordials for Christmas and they would sit on his dresser for months. Everytime I passed them my mouth would water and I'd ask my mom when dad was going to eat his candy. If I worked it right I could pass his dresser 10 or 12 times a day. Imagine all eight of us kids doing the exact same thing. I bet my mom finally just ate those darn things. She was probably sick and tired of fending off us kids. But, that could have been just an excuse. Those chocolate covered cherries could have been calling her too. Because, you see, I will state here publicly, that I am pretty sure I learned the language of chocolate from her!