Mr. Chocolate Bar

When we celebrate birthdays, the students are given the opportunity to bring a small bag containing a few of their favorite things to show to the class.  Generally in any given school year I see a variety of small toys, stuffed animals, medals, trophies, pictures, video games - nothing extraordinarily exciting, to be honest.  I try my best to appear blown away by the coolness of their stuff - as if it's the first time in my life I've ever seen a Transformer or Hello Kitty Purse; however, if I were to be truthful, in my seven years of teaching there has only ever been one object pulled from a bag that was truly awesome...

Mr. Chocolate Bar.

As Debi showed us the things from her bag, I was in my "try-to-look-interested" auto mode when she pulled out a Hershey's chocolate bar.  I admit it did grab my attention a little, as would chocolate at any other moment of any given day or night.  What I did not understand in that moment was that this particular candy bar was exceptional.

"This is Mr. Chocolate Bar." Debi explained as the melted chocolate bar flopped over in her hand like a dead fish.  "Hi!  I'm Mr. Chocolate Bar!" she responded in her best chocolate bar voice while at the same time flopping and unflopping the bar to imitate the movement of a mouth.  The class was stunned and I can't say I blamed them.  I'd never seen chocolate talk either. 

After our introduction to Debi's friend, her mom, looking less than thrilled by her daughter's choice in playmates, gave a brief synopsis of how Mr. Chocolate Bar spent his afternoons; propped up on the couch watching the boob tube with Debi, enjoying the talk at the dinner table with the fam, listening to bedtime stories in Debi's lap, and cradled in Debi's arms as she drifted off to dream land.  Then, every morning, it was back to the freezer for Mr. Chocolate Bar where he would harden up and anxiously await Debi's return from school later that day. 

You know those times when you must laugh, but you know it's just not appropriate?  Yeah.  This was one of those times.  I feel I held myself together pretty well under the circumstances, but I've been laughing ever since.

Up until this moment in my life, I can't say it had ever occurred to me to use chocolate as anything other than dessert (or breakfast, depending on the day).  And I had certainly never considered the idea of chocolate - or any other food - as a companion.  But this story is just one example of why I love how I spend my days.  I get to explore ideas from angles I never knew existed.

After exploring this particular idea, I decided that my personal preference is still to eat chocolate.  Not hang out with it.