All that glitters is not gold. You can’t judge a book by its cover. Chocolate comes in many shapes and sizes, but it’s not all great chocolate.
A friend gave us a box of chocolate. I like chocolate and I’m not alone. If angels lived on earth they would indulge themselves with the many and varied tastes of chocolate.
Dark chocolate is my favorite, rather than plain old milk chocolate (allergy to milk), so I’m somewhat selective about what kind of chocolate I indulge in and how much. Godiva’s Chocolate is good. All of it.
That box of chocolate from our friend was beautiful, about six or seven inches square, two or three inches high, and made of wonderfully textured cardboard with a big red ribbon.
That just smacked of the quality chocolate that was inside. Except quality chocolate was not inside. How did I know the five rows and multiple layers of chocolate would be of poor quality?
No chocolate map.
The box didn’t have a little chocolate brochure or map to describe each piece. If there’s no chocolate map then there’s no way to know exactly what’s inside each piece of chocolate.
It didn’t matter. All of the pieces of chocolate were the same. Bad. Rather, not good. I’m not sure it’s possible to have bad chocolate, but the makers of this chocolate were aiming for the distinction.
After biting into the first piece I had visions of Chinese sweat shop workers making chocolate out of lead or whatever the Chinese put into toothpaste to make it cheaper and deadly at the same time.
Yes, it was that bad. Rather, it was that not good.
Could it get worse? Yes. There was only one layer of chocolate in a box clearly large enough and seemingly designed for two layers; one layer of chocolate pieces atop another layer of chocolate pieces– with a map telling the happy recipient which chocolate was where.
That’s the way God intended for chocolate to be distributed.
Could it be worse? Yes. The box didn’t have a brand name, no sticker on the bottom, and nothing to identify it as a product made by humans on earth. I’ve had chocolate that tasted heavenly, as in not on earth, and it was good. This was definitely earthy chocolate, as if the maker was so embarrassed that he refused to name the pieces, name the ingredients, or name the box.
Still, it’s important to sample chocolate in the hopes that somewhere in that box of potential goodness awaits a tasty treat. Alas, after sampling one piece from each row, I gave up the ghost, and actually said no. As in, no more chocolate. I felt bad about that for days. It was a sacrifice. But I’m a better man for it.