Those infernal little pushers are back. Guilelessly, they wait, confident we will come.
My utter lack of control in the face of Girl Scouts’ Thin Mints recalls a post I wrote but didn’t publish last fall:
Every year, it’s the same. I know it’s coming. I know I will feel powerless in the face of it. I feel an annual sense of dread that others will find me out, will discover that I have this urge….
So I’m coming clean.
Here it is: I love candy corn.
And not in a wholesome, happy memories, nice to reminisce kind of way. I love candy corn in an ugly, out of control, snarfing sort of way. An eat-the-whole-bag-in-a-sitting kind of way.
I can’t explain it. I believe I am otherwise a rationale and health-conscious human being. Intellectually, I know there is nothing — NO THING — of redeeming value about those little techno-colored corn syrup kernels. But. I. Love. Them.
And: I. Loathe. Them. They’re not actually all that tasty. The sugar is cloying, the texture uneven. Don’t even get me started on the colors and free radicals. And yet, I cannot resist them if — when — I dip in. I feel sure the recipe satisfies some basic physiological dependence, some primal biological need, but I am at a loss as to what that might be. I harbor no illusions that nutrition comes into this in any way.
That we crave — and sometimes crave things that are demonstrably, desperately, devastatingly bad for us — is a potent thing. I am humbled, in awe of the courage and fortitude of those who face down far more insidious urges, moment to moment, day by day, year after year.
Listening to the Universe 