My Husband Is Trying To Kill Me With Chocolate
Remember those silly shirts, “My Parents Went To California And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt”? Well, my husband just travelled to Europe and all I got was another challenge to my diet and the promise of a bigger behind. Ugg. He had to bring home two of the biggest Toblerone candy bars known to mankind? Is he trying to kill me?
I’m about to use a little science to address the magnetic pull of that delicious chocolate. Allow me to paraphrase the results of a fun study looking at how women respond to candy in the workplace. Initially, the researcher put a bowl of candy out on the desk of the office receptionist. It was something you could grab by the handful, perhaps M&Ms. Observation revealed the expected high consumption of candy. When the bowl was moved to a table on the other side of the room, consumption dropped. Just the act of having to get up and deliberately walk over to obtain the candy reduced the amount that the study subject consumed. The same phenomena was observed if the candy took more effort to eat, such as putting each piece in a wrapper. Who wants a pile of chocolate wrappers sitting like a vast pile of remorse on the desk?
Back to my Toblerone dilemma. Every 3-6 months, I do a sweep of my pantry and throw away all of the candy and junk food that has snuck into our kitchen, but for some reason, I can’t bring myself to throw away these two gigantic bars of chocolate. Is it that I don’t want to seem ungrateful? Or do I not want to give up the option to sneak a treat every now and again? (Which isn’t a bad idea, if it really is every now and again.) We’ve already thrown out all of our leftover birthday party treats, but that chocolate…that’s a tough one to toss. So, borrowing a trick from the study on candy, I’m moving the chocolate from it’s wildly accessible location in my home office to the highest cabinet above our refrigerator. At 5’2″, it’s going to take more than a little step stool for me to reach up there. No longer will I happen upon it while walking through the house. No longer will it be within arms reach while I’m sitting at my computer. Sadly, I can’t vouch for the safety of the chocolate on the journey down the stairs and into it’s penalty box. Just one last bite.
As for my husband’s homicidal tendencies…I’m hoping for jewelry rather than candy for my next special event!
