Candy From A Baby

May 9, 2003

All names in this story have been changed. Normally this is done to protect the innocent, but in this case it’s being done to protect the guilty, including myself. So, for example, I’ll be calling myself Ralph so no one will know Ralph is me – even though I just told you who Ralph is. And when I say, "Phil" I really mean Roger Splint, who currently resides at…but I digress.

Every Spring when the rains come Easter candy, especially chocolate, is passed around and, thanks to the rain, there’s a lot of mud which can look a lot like chocolate. I hope I haven’t turned anyone off of chocolate, but I doubt a simple thing like that will cause anyone to turn down chocolate. The paintings of Salvador Dali, on the other hand…but I digress.

When I was eight years old my best friend Phil and I pulled a prank which, considering the fact that we didn’t have either the Internet or cable TV at the time, was pretty clever. For some reason we decided we were going to play a trick on my former best friend Carl. I don’t remember why he was my former best friend, only that all eight-year olds have a best friend, a second-best friend, a third-best friend, all the way down the list to their "worstest" enemy, who is usually ranked slightly above "ugh, girls." Carl was somewhere in the middle on that particular day, although within a week I think he was back to being my best friend and somewhere in there Phil went from best friend to worstest enemy then to second-best friend. You can learn a lot about international relations by studying children, and vice versa.

Here’s what Phil and I did: we took some leftover Easter candy, chocolate, of course, unwrapped it, split it, then made a ball of mud that looked exactly like the candy and wrapped it in the candy wrapper. Looking back I’m amazed by how expertly we did this. If we’d been Leopold and Loeb, we could have handed out poisoned candy instead of using a chisel, but we didn’t want to hurt anybody. We just wanted to make Carl eat dirt. Carl’s father answered the door when we knocked. Carl was in his bath, so we gave the candy to Carl’s father and asked him to pass it along to Carl. Two days later Carl’s father got sick, and, when I asked him, Carl never saw the candy. Now, I’m not exactly into geophagia, but I’ve gotten dirt or dust in my mouth on enough occasions to know it doesn’t taste anything like chocolate. Did Carl’s father eat dirt candy? Well, he did work for the post office, and you know how smart those guys are. I guess the best I can say is, maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. Either way it was Ralph’s idea.

Enjoy this week’s offerings.


THINGS THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO SAY WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK

Indubitably 
Innovative 
Preliminary 
Proliferation 
Cinnamon 

THINGS THAT ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO SAY WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK 

Specificity 
British Constitution 
Passive-aggressive disorder 
Loquacious Transubstantiate 

THINGS THAT ARE DOWNRIGHT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK

Thanks, but I don’t want to have sex 
Nope, no more booze for me. 
Sorry, but you’re not really my type. 
Good evening officer, isn’t it lovely out tonight? 
Oh, I just couldn’t. No one wants to hear me sing.

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