Too sexy for my chocolate

So anyway, on our way up to the cashier we bump into this bin full of bags of chocolate. They're all marked fifty percent off.

Now remember, the only reason we came into the drugstore was to buy index cards. The 13-year-old is in the thick of vocabulary word studies, so my brown-eyed girl figured that making flash cards would help. She's a natural-born teacher, always thinking of better ways to get the boys educated, so I named her head of our school department. I'm head of the Pretend You Don't See the Overflowing Trash Can and the Empty Toilet Paper Spindle So She Has To Deal With Them Department. It's amazing how, when you're just too lazy to empty the trash, you become so adept at piling it up well past the capacity of the garbage liner, so that it begins resembling a pyramid. Then it becomes a challenge, as you spend more time carefully trying to balance even more empty cans and banana peels on the top of the pile than it would take to simply empty the thing. My wife says I'm an expert at that, but she always says it with an industrial-strength sigh and then lies down with a stress headache.

So we select the index cards, and then she casually drifts over to the Useless Knickknacks and Doohickeys For The House section as if I can't tell what she's up to. I tell her we have enough nonsense lying around without adding to it, and make a point of mentioning the huge plastic Declaration of Independence replica with the glow-in-the-dark John Hancock signature she picked up during that trip to Pennsylvania. It cost a small fortune, so she insists on displaying it prominently on our living room wall, where she turns out the lights when guests come over so we can all appreciate John's lurid, creepy red name floating above our heads. That is, when we have guests. They've become kind of scarce, and even our own mothers, when we call them and cheerfully say, "Hey, come over and see John Hancock," hang up on us.

My wife hates when I bring that up, and always counters it with that time nine years ago when I bought a novelty multi-colored tank top that played "I'm too sexy for my shirt" when I pressed it just above the navel. Women never forget anything they can potentially use as ammunition even decades later.

She's still pouting when we bump the half-price chocolate bin. The bags are leftovers from the holidays, rejected by customers because they're an off-brand with less-popular flavor combinations like chocolate/seaweed and chocolate/liverwurst. The cashier is squeezing her eyes shut, praying fervently that we'll buy the whole lot and get them out of her hair. She's been snacking on the chocolate /seaweed combo off and on for two weeks because they're oddly addictive, but they've been causing inappropriate eruptions her husband has stopped finding funny.

I am one of those males that craves chocolate as much or more than females are supposed to, so this is a genuine test of my will power. I look at a nearby display of chipotle trail mix, and in my heart I know it's healthier to eat those twigs and seeds, but we're talking about chocolate so let's nobody get holier-than-thou.

I rummage through the bin to see if the holiday shoppers inadvertently passed over a chocolate/caramel combination, which, I've never seen two flavors complement each other better, unless you want to count the taste sensation of your fifth beer and old cheese curls you find in the sofa, and then just maybe you'd have a legitimate argument.

The chocolate is only a dollar, my wife points out, and I'm tempted, but I promised myself in this new year that I would try harder to resist. So I walk bravely up to the cashier and announce, "No thank you. None for me today, I'm being strong," and she inappropriately erupts and says, "Well, good for you," while in her head she thinks: Ha! That's more for me!

We place the index cards on the counter, and from the corner of my eye I see my beloved bring matching Gumby and Pokey decorative statuettes from behind her back. She looks at me defiantly and sets them down to be purchased, and when I start to object she presses my thermal jacket and it sings, "I'm too sexy for my coat."

I mean, women never forget anything.