Sour Patch Lamaze

The twins have always served to complete the missing parts of each others' personalities. We often joke that, had they been one baby instead of two, they would have been the perfect child. For example:

• The German is always quiet and reflective. The Italian is always loud and emotional.
• The German is soft and sedentary. The Italian is sinewy and strong.
• The German loves peanut butter but hates jelly. The Italian loves jelly but hates peanut butter.
• The German has excellent hand-eye coordination. He swims like a fish. The Italian does not have excellent hand-eye coordination. He swims like a drowning man being electrocuted while having an epilectic seizure.

Despite their differences, which are endless and register deep down to their inner cores, they desperately need each other. And regardless of the numerous "aw"-inspiring displays of brotherly love this need creates for our amusement, I must admit there are times when the bond does seem a little too tightly fastened. Take the example of the the Sour Patch candies as a case in point.

We were vacationing on Hilton Head Island a few weeks ago and someone with whom we were traveling purchased a bag of sour gummy candies, but several days into the trip had still not opened the bag. One rainy night, as we shopped for contraband candy to sneak into a movie theater for an evening showing of "Despicable Me 2," the German could no longer stand to be denied. For his treat he selected his own bag of sour patch candies. We crept into the theater with eight pounds of sugar in our pockets and left two hours later five pounds of candy -- and several ounces of tooth enamel -- lighter.

On the way back to our rented townhouse, I was groggily attempting to pay attention to the road when I heard My Lovely Wife begin to chuckle. My first thought was that she was recalling some bit of comedy from the movie. That's when she motioned for me to observe the boys.

Turns out the sour candies were so sour that one child alone could not manage the supreme sourness without moral support from the other. As each new morsel was popped into a mouth, the afflicted boy firmly gripped the other's hand. Like coaches in a birthing class, they encouraged each other to squeeze tightly and breathe through the eye-closing, mouth-puckering delight of sour candy pain. I experienced a fleeting flashback to twelve years earlier when I was rubbing My Lovely Wife's lower back and assuring her the epidural was on its way.

At the very least, when it is time for their own children to enter this world, I will be able to advise the boys' future wives they do not need any instruction. They've already experienced sour patch Lamaze.


© 2013 Mark Feggeler

The Chocolate Deficit

Stop the presses!

Call nine-one-one!!

Get FEMA on the phone and tell them to alert the nation about the most distressing national disaster of all time!!!

Worse than a tornado! More terrifying than an earthquake! As devastating, if not more so, than the impending zombie apocalypse (scary fast-moving zombies, not the slow "I can't believe I can't outrun them" zombies). What's the dilemma, you ask? The chocolate in our kids' leftover Easter candy bags is disappearing!

Every Easter, when that stupid rabbit breaks-and-enters our house with his paganistic eggs and candy and fills our kids' baskets to the point of bursting, you'll find me lurking in a corner, rubbing my hands together and snickering like Snidely Whiplash. For the next few weeks, I lay in wait, plotting and planning and scheming endless ways to separate foil-wrapped chocolates from their respective rightful owners.

Our Daughter never used to eat any of her candy. Out of sight, out of mind seemed to be her modus operandi. That made her candy easier pickings than a pocket-protector nerd in a dodgeball game.

The Italian never liked peanut butter chocolate eggs, so those were the first to go from his bag, one by one, wrapper by empty wrapper hidden in the kitchen trash can. Like magic the peanut butter chocolate eggs vanished. The German never liked those crunchy chocolate bars with the puffed rice inside of them, so those were next on the hit list. Unwrap it, sweep it through the five-pound container of peanut butter in the pantry, and down they go.

When it comes to chocolate, to call my craving a sweet tooth does not do it justice. Too limiting. Mine is more like a sweet limb, or even an entire quadrant of the body. The fact our kids hardly ever ate their holiday candy simply meant more for me.

Christmas? Stocking candy!

Halloween? Random sampler stranger candy!!

Easter? Holy crap it's time to buy a girdle candy!!!

But this year, something strange happened. I'm suddenly living in some bizarro alternate universe in which children eat candy. And not just the good candy, either. Not only are the Snickers and Milky Ways and Hershey's solid milk chocolate bunnies wrapped to look like Star Wars stormtroopers being eaten, even the jelly beans and faux marshmallows in the shape of cartoon foods that typically spend their days collecting lint and wrapper shrapnel at the bottom of the bag are disappearing. What does that leave for me? Nothing.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Dude, you're forty-five years old and can go buy all the chocolate and candy you could ever want, eat it 'til you puke, and go back for more."

That's true. I can, and I probably have, but it isn't the same. The expression "easy as taking candy from a baby" came about not only because it satisfactorily expresses the ease of accomplishing a task, but also because taking candy from babies is fun and gratifying, especially when those babies are yours and they don't even realize they're missing out on a good thing when you take their candy.

Maybe, if I'm lucky, this trend will reverse itself before Halloween.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Candy Crack

I have a sweet tooth.

Give me chocolate, anything chocolate, especially that semi-sweet dark chocolate. I buy a large bag of semi-sweet chocolate morsels normally used in baking every other week, sometimes more frequently. Don't give me any grief about it either because, according to Reader's Digest and dozens of health-oriented websites, two ounces of dark chocolate per day is good for you.

And the darker the better. Have you ever seen the gourmet candy bars that proudly declare their percentage of cocoa content? Once you reach eighty percent, it barely resembles chocolate anymore. When you take a bite, which you have to do because breaking the bar into bite-size pieces simply won't work, it all just crumbles into a fine chocolate dust in your mouth.

You might say yuck. I say yum.

But my candy fascination is not limited to ultra-dark chocolate. If dark can not be found, milk chocolate will serve as a proper substitute. I typically don't find it as satisfying but beggars can't be choosers. Just don't give me white chocolate. It isn't chocolate. Does it look brown to you? Does it taste like chocolate? It's white. Nothing white can be chocolate.

"But it's made from the oils that remain after cocoa beans are processed into chocolate," you might say.

So, it's a by-product. You know what else is a by-product? Poop. My dog's poop is the by-product of the process during which the most beneficial materials are extracted from the little nuggets of kibble we feed her. I'm not going to eat my dog's poop, therefore I'm not going to eat the oils extracted from cocoa after the best stuff has been removed. It is chocolate poop and I'm not going to eat it.

Anyway, the other day my lovely Wife and I took the kids to see Toy Story 3. As we like to do, we snuck huge bags of candy into the theatre in one of my lovely Wife's tremendous purses. We had Startbursts, Twizzlers, Raisinets and Junior Mints. A fifth bag contained a candy we had never tried before -- M&M Pretzels.

The movie was great. The M&Ms were life-changing.

It has been a long time since I have come across a treat that has to be handled like plutonium. Left in the open, unsealed and unmonitored, this thirty-ounce resealable bag of delectable temptation will vanish, reappearing later in the day just above your hips and immediately to the right and left of your stomach. Candy this good should require a prescription.

Less than a week later and the thirty-ounce bag of M&M Pretzels is gone but not forgotten, gulped down handfuls at a time and with complete disregard to health, wellness, nausea, blood sugar levels, and self-esteem.

We know one thing and one thing only from our first encounter with this dangerous concoction: We can never buy it again.



ⓒ 2010 Mark Feggeler