Beware of Strangers with Candy

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 7, Verses 16 & 17

"My bed is spread with lovely, colored sheets of finest linen imported from Egypt, perfumed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.  Come on, let's take our fill of love until morning."

--

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Beware of strangers with candy.

What does chocolate do?  It releases little chocolatey molecules of wondrous rapture inside you.  You seek pleasure, chocolate finds you.  

Mm.

Noice.

It gets on your fingers, unless it's encased within an MNMey colored sugar-shell, but you don't care, because it's chocolate, not dog shit or roofing tar.  You don't like when dog shit or roofing tar get on your fingers, because you can't lustily lick it off.

But you can, and should, do that with chocolate.

Chocolate is what you give to people whom you want to like you, or forgive you, or worse.  So I should have been hearing all kinds of alarm bells going off inside my head when the Volvo saleslady pushed a gold box towards me with two sets of Volvo keys on top of it.  

That should have been the warning.  That should have been the knell.  But instead, I melted in my chair and said read my line like the trained performing artist/monkey I am and said, "Oh, that's sweet."

GET IT?!  CHOCOLATE?!  SWEET?!!!!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They gave me chocolate, and a thirteen-year-old car.  Granted, this car has 90,000 miles on its odometer.  That's under 7,000 miles a year.  That's amazing.  The car, a V70XC wagon, is beautiful.  On the long, LONG 105.2 mile drive home from the dealership in Mechanicsburg (oh, yes, I will name you if you don't make this right) I almost cried out because the ride was so tank-like, so ferociously smooth, so luxuriously sumptuous.  It was like piloting a Dane Decor furniture showroom down the highway.  

And then, twenty-six hours later: the Check Engine light came on.  

It's at my mechanic's right now.  I'm terrified about what he's going to say.  My mind is reeling and racing and raging.  I was so furious when I stared down that little orange light I just wanted to disappear.  

But, no.  

No.

That's what I do.  That's what I do when I get mad: I disappear.  I crawl and slink away into the shadows, apologizing-- bowing out, exiting stage left.  "It's wrong to yell," I said in therapy, just today-- just an hour before the Check Engine light came on.  I said that.  For real.  Like a third grader, with the most basic black-and-white conceptualization of morality, social constructs and acceptable behavior.  

It's wrong to yell?  

Wow.

And I can hear it, of course, the illogical nature of that statement.  But I try so hard to be nice.  To be nice, good, kind, kind, good nice.  I'm so terrified that someone might think ill of me if I let loose one time, if I say what I'm really thinking or feeling, if I react in a way that my muscle can't back up, if I cry or if my voice shakes or if I raise that voice that makes me so sick to listen to, that halting, stilted, can't find the word for the love of all that's holy voice.  

Holier than thou.

Holier than chocolate.

Holvo Volvo.  

Fix my car, please.  I love that car.  Or, at least, I want to love that car.

And you can keep your fucking chocolate.