The Easter Egg incident

When I was growing up, we didn't have hollow chocolate easter eggs in our house like other families I knew. Some genius of a doctor had decided it was chocolate that tended to give one of my elder brothers migraines, so the whole family went without chocolate most of the time as a gesture of support for him. At least, that's how my memory recalls the explanation I was given. To me, it just seemed like a cruel wheeze designed to deny me chocolate and turn Easter into a time of slow, painful torture. While other kids were looking forward to gorging themselves on big, fat, hollow chocolate easter eggs, we had to make do with rubbish imitation eggs made out of marshmallow with a paper-thin chocolate coating. These marshmallow egg-shaped substitutes tasted vile and the chocolate around them was cheap and nasty, never a happy combination for a kid.

So, one Easter, I plotted my revenge. I found the family stash of marshmallow easter eggs and secreted myself behind a sofa while I eat the chocolate off the outside of at least half a dozen, if not more. When I was eventually discovered, surrounding by half-masticated marshmallow blobs, I was feeling ill and sickened by my guilt and gluttony. I don't think I get any marshmallow eggs that easter as punishment, but then I've never been able to eat one since. Just thinking about them turns my stomach - bleughhhhh.

A few years later I got a paper round and saved up enough money to buy myself a hollow chocolate easter egg, like the kind every other kid at school seemed to have. It was good, but the aftertaste of all those marshmallow imitations spoiled the triumph of finally getting what I'd always wanted.

I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere...