A Story of Gluttony

On Sunday, I was preparing to make a wicked spaghetti sauce for me and my friend, when I realized I was missing the most important ingredient: tomato sauce. I had gotten every single thing I needed for my sauce the day before except that. I even got obscure stuff like zucchini and rosemary, but I somehow ignored the most basic ingredient when I was foraging around at the grocery store.

You idiot, I thought. Well, there's nothing for it now. Let's just go get it.

I decided to go to a store nearby my place, a kind of discount variety store called Giant Tiger. They sell everything there from cheap beach towels to ice cream. It's kind of like a poor man's Walmart - everything there is bottom-of-the-barrel cheap. A lot of the people who shop there are the sort that wear too-tight spandex pants or dirty checkered hunting shirts. So I felt right at home in my pajama bottoms and rubber boots. All I needed was the sauce, okay? It wasn't a night at the Oscars.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when I walked in - because what did I see in front of me? Chocolate! Boxes and boxes of chocolate bars, on sale for the unbelievable low price of .30 cents per bar. Thirty cents! I began to hyperventilate, and grabbed one of the plastic baskets provided for my convenience.

I just couldn't control myself. The thing is, I'm addicted to chocolate. It's a craving, as real to me as cigarettes or heroin. I eat it every day, and a meal feels wrong to me if I can't have chocolate when I'm finished it. One of my favourite things to do is to read a book in bed with a bag of M&M's, or maybe take in a movie with a sack of cookies on my chest. It's lame, I know. But it's a fact. Anytime I can't eat it, I understand why people fail to graduate their 12-step program. One of these days, I'm going to pull a George and attempt to combine chocolate eating and sex, and that's when I'll know I've hit rock bottom.

Another thing to appreciate is, at ordinary corner stores around here, the going rate for a chocolate bar is about $1.20. Or sometimes there are deals, like 2 for $1.70, stuff like that. But never in a million years, thirty cents. And I mean, I know everybody loves a bargain. But I'm special that way too. We have a saying in our family:

"Wow, he jumped on that like a Ward on a penny."

My family, we like bargains. Most people like to talk about what name-brand their shirt is, or what company made their home entertainment system. Well, I like to talk about how cheaply I got it for. It feels like you win somehow when you buy something at a steep discount.

So combine the fact that chocolate is an addictive substance for me, for sale at a price literally less than dirt, and I was powerless to escape.

The other thing that caught my eye was the fact that the majority of the bars were American ones. In Canada, we have a rainbow of different bars for sale up here that most people have never heard of. But open in front of my eyes were crates of Paydays, Nestle Crunch's, Baby Ruths. You name it. The fetish of the exotic - I had to have them. I began to sweep chocolate into my basket. My hands shook as I did it - I had this stupid idea that if I didn't make good on this deal fast enough, it would be taken away from me somehow. Talk about an impulse buy.

The chick at the cash gave me the old hairy eyeball:

Checkout Girl: Gee, got enough chocolate, man?

Me (looking somewhat crazed): This will do for now.

Checkout Girl: I hope you didn't blow your wad or anything - don't forget Easter is next week. Those rabbits over there are going to be a quarter each.

Me (shouting): I forgot about Easter! I'll be back!

Anyway, I decided tonight to take a photo of my haul. I've eaten about a third of it so far, but I emptied my wallet on Sunday - $24 worth of chocolate. I haven't had this much on my bedspread since I went door-to-door in my old hobo costume for Hallowe'en in the seventh grade:


They'll be gone by the weekend, I promise.

Me (proudly, like bringing home a new baby): LOOK what I got!

My friend: Sacrement de vierge! That's a lot of chocolate!

Me (smug): I know, it was so cheap, too. I got a fantastic deal.

One thing though - during my demented buying frenzy, I forgot to pick up the tomato sauce.

Oh well. I can't remember everything.