The answer is chocolate. What was the question?
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
This was going to be a column about the joys and benefits of exercise. Then I remember that wise maxim attributed to Good Ol’ Charlie Schulz:
“Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it, I wash my mouth out with chocolate.”
As I munched on my chocolate cleanse, I pondered other words of wisdom that Charles M. Schulz — he of Peanuts fame — imparted: “All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Obviously, a Snickers bar or a dark chocolate truffle would be far less painful than, say, running six miles. Chocolate doesn’t leave you with side stitches and blisters.
Not that stretching isn’t important — especially when reaching for the chocolate stash that you hid on the top shelf.
As I’ve pointed out many times before, chocolate IS a health food. It can prevent all sorts of headaches, pains and bruised eardrums if you offer it to your spouse at critical moments — like just before she’s about to clobber you for the latest inconsiderate stunt you’ve committed.
As I’ve previously reported, various scientific studies have proved that chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, reduces stress, reduces inflammation, and improves memory, immunity and mood.
It also reduces heart disease risk by breaking up bad cholesterol, improves blood flow to lower blood pressure and heighten brain power, reduces the risks of stroke, helps protect the skin from the effects of the sun, boosts athletic performance, and the scent of chocolate drifting from your pores can confuse mosquitoes.
Michael Levine, a developmental and cell biologist at Princeton University, once observed, “Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world’s perfect food.”
For those of us who didn’t go to Princeton, what it means is this: Chocolate is the duct tape of life. It fixes nearly everything.
So if at first you don’t succeed, eat more chocolate.
After all, who stuck by you when the woes of life crashed down around you? It wasn’t broccoli, I can tell you that. Rutabagas never even showed their rooty little faces in times of stress and distress.
But chocolate was there for you. Chocolate understands you better than people do.
To paraphrase the great philosopher Will Rogers, I’ve never met a problem that chocolate couldn’t handle. It’s the only substance I trust to make everything better.
“When the going gets tough,” the great philosopher Erma Bombeck noted, “the tough make cookies.” Presumably, chocolate chip.
Or as the great philosopher Jill Shalvis put it, “Chocolate is cheaper than therapy, and you don't need an appointment.”
The great philosopher Dave Barry once noted, “My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished two bags of M&Ms and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.”
That doesn’t make sense, you say?
“Your hand and your mouth agreed many years ago that, as far as chocolate is concerned, there is no need to involve the brain,” Dave said.
I saw this joke the other day:
Pros to being an adult — I can eat 15 bars of chocolate and no one can stop me.
Cons to being an adult — I ate 15 bars of chocolate and no one stopped me.
The reason that’s so hilarious is that it assumes that there is such a thing as too much chocolate. How absurd.
When someone tells me to stop eating chocolate, I stop listening.
There is no Chocoholics Anonymous because no one wants to quit. Or, as the great philosopher Lora Brody stated, “I could give up chocolate, but I’m not a quitter.”
Someone who was too busy not quitting to give her name observed, “Behind every successful woman is a successful amount of chocolate.”
The sum total of this box of chocolates is this: “Laughter may be the best medicine, but sometimes, you just need chocolate.”
Enjoy a chocolate milkshake with Burt at news@falmouthoutlook.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.