Candy Consumption: Yer Doin' It Wrong

I recently began working my way through a short story I'll be publishing for Valentine's Day. One of the quirky little habits I gave to a main character comes straight out of my life. It's actually my own... only I don't consider it a quirky habit. I consider it normal. The rest of you are really getting it wrong.

The whole subject actually arose when Ahmed went on a campaign to get me to eat this past week. I will resist the urge to elaborate. But he got so annoying about it that I took his "I don't give a damn what you eat, as long as you eat" declaration and ran with it. Because, frankly, I never pass on an opportunity to aggravate my man. And NOTHING aggravates my man more than watching me eat candy.

Oh yeah... it gets ugly. I can get him to go from zero to spaz in about 10 seconds.

I start with a KitKat, which is a personal favorite. KitKats must be consumed in a very specific methodology. I break the bar into the pre-carved segments: four bars. I then turn the individual sub-bars on their side like an ear of corn on the cob, and using my front teeth, pry the TOP (narrowest) layer of chocolate-cookie-wafer goodness from the others in a solid sheet. I eat that layer. I then move on to the next layer, finishing with the widest (bottom), and lick the crumbs and chocolate from my fingers. I pause for a minimum of one minute before moving on to the next KitKat log.

At this point my man unit is pretending to ignore this, but he is exhibiting a telltale pursing of the lips as he peruses his newspaper/tv show/book. I am not fooled. By the time I get halfway through the second log he will have a rhythmic muscle tic in his jaw. He will explode in hysteria by the time I get to log 3.

Should the drug store be having a sale on M&M's I can absolutely ensure a full-on explosion. The Peanut M&M is my finest medium. I work so much better in color. Color, of course, is the key to consumption of my much beloved nuggets. One never, never, NEVER eats M&M's without sorting them. Never. Stay with me, I'll walk you through it.

I like to put the entire bag into a bowl so that sorting is simpler, but you can do this by individual handful if you must.

We divide by color, in order of preference. My own are: blue, green, yellow, red, orange, brown. (This, understand, is the standard bag, not the festive holiday colors or other special editions.) I eat all of one color, then all of the next, et cetera. If I am taking individual handfuls from a bag rather than working with a bowl, I sort each grab. Any color pairings with fewer than two of one color are returned to the bag for another grab. There must be a minimum of two in any given color.

I eat the Peanut M&M by first biting the exterior candy and chocolate shell from the nut, setting the nut aside, and eating all the nuts rendered from that color grouping before moving on to the next. Any M&M's broken during the process are consumed quickly to hide evidence of failure in the process.

I rarely finish the first color grouping before Ahmed's temple begins to show a throbbing tic that causes one eye to spasm intermittently. This is usually followed by a rictus grin that looks, quite honestly, bit painful.

So you know... as long as I'm eating SOMETHING. The outbursts and facial tremors are just a bonus.

And don't talk to me about alternative methods. Yer doin' it wrong.