The Chocolate Thief
My interest in shoving spoonfuls of cocoa powder between my lips stemmed from two things: it was forbidden and a very interesting sensory experience.
My little brother likes to tell anyone who wants to hear, the story of how I was keeping cocoa powder hidden in the shed in front of the house. Yes, growing up in a family with two hungry brothers meant that I had plenty of secret food stashes hidden around the garden.
After a long day at school, I would come home, drop my bag at the bottom of the stairs and run into the kitchen. Unfortunately, my mum happens to have extendable ears and would soon follow my steps and remind us (yes guarantee one of my brothers was tagging along), that dinner was already cooking on the stove. Grudgingly, we would pick up our bags and go about daydreaming on a wrinkly sheet of German vocabulary. But most of the week, Mum was still working and we had a good two hours of binge-watching shows we were forbidden from and hunting for secret snack stash around the house. See, the thing is, my parents were all in favor of fun snacks and loved food as much as us, but they thought this was a weekend-plus-special-nights kind of thing. We did not agree, at all.
But how does this bring me to becoming a hoarder of cocoa powder? While my brothers were super handy when it came to being tall enough to look at the highest shelves of the cellar, they were also, incredibly loud. Additionally, they loved to street fight and run around the house until one of them would redecorate the living room with yogurt (this is a story for another day). And I liked my own company, craved alone time and calmness. Like any other kid, I liked the idea of having secrets. The garden became my escape and I started hiding outside what I wanted to keep for myself.
One day, I simply took the cacao box, a big spoon and went to hide in the shed. My interest in shoving spoonfuls of cocoa powder between my lips stemmed from two things: it was forbidden and a very interesting sensory experience. Cocoa powder was meant as 2 small spoons diluted in warm milk for the weekend breakfasts. Anything more was labeled “demoniac” by Grandma and was therefore very attractive to me.
Sitting on a yellowish plastic chair in one corner of the shed I was keeping the full spoon inside my mouth, letting the first layer melt into a chocolate barrier, and then savoring the moment until biting in the middle to let the sandy-sweet grains cover my tongue.
All of a sudden, my mouth still full of cocoa powder, I hear my mum yelling from the window with her do-not-make-me-come-to-get-you voice. I coughed, letting a cloud of sweet powder valse in the air, quickly wiped my face, and hurried towards the house leaving the spoon inside the box and the box on the top shelf of the shed.
No one ever noticed, Mum bought another box of cocoa powder and the cutlery drawer forever missed a spoon.
My secret was discovered years later by the whole family when my little brother got revenge on me for winning at Catan by spilling the beans. I had told him about the stash in a weak moment: he desperately needed a spoonful of cocoa powder to forget about a street fight battle injury.
