Chocolate is God's way of reminding men how inadequate they are.
I
am vividly confronted with this fact every time my wife and I go
out
to a restaurant. When it gets to dessert, my wife usually orders
the
most chocolate-saturated dessert possible: It's the one
called
"Unstoppable Double- Fudge Chocolate Mudslide Explosion" or some
such
thing. I always wonder why anyone would want to eat anything
that
promises a catastrophic natural disaster in your mouth.
The
dark brown monstrosity arrives at the table, and my wife takes
the first
bite. Before the fork is even removed from her mouth, a
small moan escapes
her lips. Her eyes, previously perfectly aligned,
first cross slightly and
then faze completely, pupils dilating in
pure chocolate pleasure before
the eyelids clamp down in ecstasy. The
hand not holding the fork clenches
into a fist and starts pounding
the table. The silverware
rattles.
After about six minutes of this, she finally manages to
swallow the
bite, realign her eyes, and take the next shuttle back from
whatever
transcendental plane she's been visiting. Slowly, her
sphere of
consciousness expands to include me, her husband, her life-long
mate,
her presumed partner in all things ecstatic. "Hey, this is
pretty
good," she'll say. "You want some?"
No, I don't. I
want nothing to do with an object that does to my
wife in one bite what
I've worked for an entire relationship to
achieve. It wouldn't do
any good, anyway. Men just don't have the
same relationship with
chocolate that women do. It's not even close.
I wandered around
the office today and asked men, "Chocolate. Your
thoughts?" and the
result was always the same. First, a confused look
as to why they're being
asked about something so trivial, and then
some lame, obvious statement:
"Uh...it's brown?"
Ask women the same question, and you get responses
like "The ONLY
food group, ESSENTIAL to life as we know it," and the
ultimate casual
swipe at every member of the Y-chromosome brigade, "better
than sex."
Ouch. Some women will try to make up for that last one by
quickly
adding that chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac.
Uh-huh.
Chocolate certainly increases desire; problem is the desire
is
usually for more chocolate.
The best a guy can do is buy a box
of chocolates and hope he'll be
considered somewhere between the cherry
truffle and the strawberry
nougat. Don't get me wrong. Guys
like chocolate just fine; it's just
not essential to life as we know
it. Respiration is essential to
life as we know it; chocolate is
simply one of those nice little
bonuses you get. We won't usually pass it
up if it's offered, but I
don't know too many guys who would get
substantially worked up if it
were to suddenly disappear from the face of
the earth (ironic in a
way, as back in the days of the Aztecs, only
men were allowed to have
the stuff). When I eat a chocolate
dessert, I enjoy it, yes. My
world view doesn't narrow to
include only the plate that it's on.
Maybe we're missing
something. On the other hand, we don't have to
pick up our
silverware from the floor after we're done with our
tiramisu.
Life is about trade-offs like that. All I know is that
come
Valentine's Day, chocolate will be among the things I offer
my
wife. I can't truly appreciate it, but I can truly
appreciate what
it does for her. Which is close
enough.
(author unknown)
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