More than just a chocolate surprise

Porch sign

By Laura Grimes

Dear Mr. Scatter,

You do realize, right, that while you sped away to have a raucous dinner party at the assisted-living facility, you left me here to 1. make my own coffee. 2. fetch my own newspaper. 3. share my bed with more beasts than usual and 4. somehow end up with less bed space.

Ah, but the co-opted bed comes with a bonus. When I got home late last night The Small Large Smelly Boy was already ensconced on your side of the bed half-asleep and half-watching House Hunters International on HGTV (I can’t make this stuff up). We attempted to continue the family tradition that you claim to be a medicinal practice: Eat a dark Dove chocolate every night. But this morning, after I unpretzeled myself to get up, The SLSB said, “Oh, look out for a chocolate somewhere in the bed.” Apparently, his half-asleepness last night got the better of him.

I didn’t think much of it, except to remind myself to carefully look over the bed when I got around to making it. But I didn’t get that far …

As I neatly folded up my pajama bottoms to put in the drawer, I suddenly froze, horrified and more than a little grossed out. There was something brown smeared on my pants and it looked strangely familiar. My brain bounced around for a bit trying to make sense of it. The cat? The kid? Something I didn’t know about myself? And then I took the pj pants upstairs to show the SLSB.

“What is that?!” He sounded just as shocked as I was.

“That’s what I asked.” I was trying to sound slightly indignant.

I could tell his brain was bouncing around just like mine had and then he started laughing. Laughing!

“Sorry about that,” he managed.

What a big fat mess. I fetched the warped, offending chocolate that was stuck to the bed sheet to show him. As I held it up, we had a brilliant idea. Let’s find out what the stupid fortune says. For those of you who don’t partake in this medicinal practice, Dove chocolates have little sayings in the foil wrappers, which are about as clever as too-tight britches. A random assortment plucked from the garbage can:

Catch snowflakes on your tongue.
Happiness looks great on you.
Satisfy your sense of surprise.

Yeah, I’d rather poke a needle in my eye, too.

“What does this one say?” asked the SLSB. “Eat chocolate in bed?”

I took the little used-to-be-melty now hard-as-clay misshapen mess to the kitchen, leaned over a garbage can, and started clawing apart the foil, which came off in glitter-size pieces. Chocolate wedged under my fingernails. Finally, I got the foil open enough to look like this:

I went through all that work just to read this?

Translation: “All you really need is love, and a little chocolate doesn’t hurt.”

When I hollered this up to the SLSB, he replied, “Yes it does!”

Exactly.

In an effort to make our medicinal practice less hurtful and more entertaining (not that brown smudge on the pj pants isn’t entertaining), we would like to make a few humble suggestions for better fortune sayings to the company that makes Dove chocolates. Our suggestions are whatever pictures of random signs happen to be in my phone right now, and any one of these would be better than the drivel on those little pieces of foil.

Dove chocolate company, please take heed. What about these for those little packets of love?

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