Dead Aim

Tonight we were watching the first few episodes of Freaks and Geeks on DVD and it reminded me of something from my childhood.

Before I go poetically waxing about years gone by, let me take a moment to ask myself a question: How is it that I missed this show the first time around?

Anyway, in the third episode these kids are out on Halloween night trick-or-treating when they come upon the house of some longhaired hippie dude. Instead of handing out candy, he’s giving away carob. “It’s nature’s chocolate,” he says.

Oh, the memories.

When I was a kid, my parents made me eat all sorts of things that the other kids didn’t have in their houses. We had sorghum instead of maple syrup on our pancakes. Everyone else had Twinkies while I ate brown bread that my father baked in an old coffee can. When I spent the night at someone’s house, I was always excited to have Froot Loops for breakfast instead of granola or some healthy multigrain cereal.

I wouldn’t call my parents hippies or anything, but they… Well, they were into a healthy lifestyle back then and we did live in the hippie capital of the Pacific Northwest, so I suppose it was inevitable.

The worst thing though, was carob. It was among other things my mother would try to pass off to me as delicious. “It’s just like chocolate,” she’d say with a smile. “C’mon, it’s tastes just like chocolate,” my dad would say as he ate a carob chip cookie.

But I knew better.

I can only assume my parents came to their senses at some point, because I haven’t seen them eat carob in years. But for a while they did. And so did I. So let me put this rumor to rest once and for all…

Carob is not just like chocolate.

Carob does not taste just like chocolate.

CAROB IS NOT NATURE’S CHOCOLATE.