Chocotrauma

I don't like chocolate brownies. I don't like chocolate, for that matter. Weird fish? Hmm. Carpe diem (and that don't mean Fish of the Day). I shall seize the moment and tell you why.

It must be that when I was small and someone sent us a ginormous chocolate Easter rooster (yep rooster not bunny - Hong Kongers typically with their entrepreneurial spirit go several sizes up, as bigger is ALWAYS better - so none of your Easter chicks, it's gotta be a whole rooster)... As I was saying... we were given this monster choccie rooster, who lived above the Frigidaire (remember those?) in the entrance foyer of my childhood home, for weeks. And everyday, small lass that I was at age 4 or so, would come home from kindergarten, amble pass the unreachable fowl and ogle. Adore. Dream, as much my small mind could dream, of tomorrow. Waiting for the eventual moment when our lives' paths would truly cross in a sweet, dribbly denouement. I knew well enough that inside the tum of the big bird were multiple chocolate eggs. You crack the belly open and gasp with delight, count the tinzel wrapped ovals which would tumble out with abandon, wobble for a few seconds, then lie gleaming in the daylight, newborn to the sky. Pure bliss to an anticipating child.

Well, fate would have it that one day, as I came back from my ballet class on a Saturday afternoon, or I awoke from a compulsory Saturday afternoon - I forget which - and the smell of burnt chocolate assailed my wee nostrils. "What is that SMELL?!" I wondered, and fell out of my bed, clad only in my undies, to investigate. The first port of call in those weeks as I clearly recall, no matter where I was truly headed in the Art Deco style 1950s apartment, and while Big Bird was a resident guest, was always a detour past the Frigidaire.

AY CARRRRRAMBA! Birdie gone AWOL! MIA! Disappearéd! I could barely contain the panic which formed immediately from the pit of my small girl's stomach and rose to my gullet only to remain as a small hard pebble, which couldn't go further up and out, or be swallowed back down. If a 4 year old could have apoplexy, I think had a close encounter of the peptic ulcer inducing kind ... It sounded like this: WAHHHHHHHH!!!!

My amah (Chinese nanny) came running out to me in alarm.
"What is it? What is it?"
"WHERE IS THE CHOCOLATE CHICKEN???!" I wailed.
Nanny's sundried sour lemon screwed up face relaxed.
"Oh that! You nearly gave me a heart attack."
Duh, You should speak! thought little me.
"It's being made into lovely chocolate cookies. Your Mother and I have been making them all afternoon. Can't you smell it?"
So that explained the stench of burnt cocoa.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN MADE INTO COOKIES?? HOW MADE?" I continued to screech, my face so contorted from tears and lack of oxygen now it was bright pink and shiny.
"Well it's been melted down of course, silly. Come and see - they are all shapes of animals."

I was in so much shock at the thought of Big Chocolate Bird disintegrating into a huge dark puddle over a bain marie in the back kitchen by the servants quarters, I was speechless, and let nanny pull me by my cold sweaty hand into the dining room, where mother was still cutting out cookie shapes. There lay before me a vista of unspeakable carnage: multiple dead bodies; the fresh reincarnation of Chocolate Rooster: cookies tanned with just his shade of bittersweet shaped as bunnies, and whalies and kangaroolies and doggies.

Nanny handed me a freshly baked kangaroo and told me to run along. And although I liked the fact that I could bite off its long curly tail, I bit it with venom, weeping in scant suppressed heaving sobs as I made my way back to the entrance hallway.

I stood trembling under the Frigidaire, staring up at the big empty space where Rooster used to live. Sucking the kangaroo tail forlornly, I reached up onto my tippy toes and pulled the handle with some trepidation. The fridge door finally creaked open and swung into a wide arc, the light bulb within bathing me in its cold warm light. And there in the door compartment, wobbling slightly, were the tinzel chocolate eggs of variable sizes, which once lived in the tum of the rooster. I knew then, without shadow of doubt, for such was my small girl's world of zero confidence, that I would never taste them, never feel the crack of their crunch shell against my milk teeth, or know how the half sweet creamy curdly lumps would feel as they melted slowly against my tongue, and trickle down my throat, coating my oesophagus until I couldn't speak or sing for a good half hour at least. For sweets which lay in the fridge door compartment were only given for extremely good behaviour. It was our own homemade reward system. Mother would say, if I had a rare 10 out of 10 for a spelling test, a good piece of colouring in, or a star stamp commending my Chinese calligraphy practice sheet writing out "aeroplane aeroplane aeroplane aero..." a hundred times over -
"You may go to the fridge door and retrieve one sweet of your own choice, as a treat."

And since my calligraphy was so appalling I don't even get the piggy stamp for sloppy writing, I couldn't spell straight, and never got more than 6 out of 10 for any test at school, 4 if I'm honest; I knew my fate was sealed where sweetie rewards were concerned. After some months, Mother would have nanny throw out "those awful stale, old sweets", and that would be that. Confection funerals were conducted regularly in my childhood home.

So you see, I have cause, I have good reason and sufficient childhood trauma in my emobabble, psychosocial baggage hold, to declare once and for all, that I HATE CHOCOLATE.

All this reminiscing just because - I was hungry and found in my handbag, a week old chocolate brownie from Café Nero's, which I had squirrelled away for my sweetheart, just in case he got hungry one sweet sunny morning.

The End.
#y'allhaveanicedaynow