Published: February 26, 2009

I have been told I am not normal, American, female or human.  I have been called an idiot, a liar, and a freak.  It’s been said as a first line, after weeks of knowing someone, and on a few occasions not until years have passed.  When I was young I hated it, but it has become an expectation, a normal reaction, and I’ve become numb.  All this for one reason: I don’t like chocolate.

It is isolating, disliking something so universally loved, and I have often felt the sting of loneliness at birthdays, sleepovers, and holidays.  I felt it when, on my eighteenth birthday, my mother bought two cakes—a small vanilla one for me, and a large chocolate one for everyone else. My protests gained me nothing other than the response “It’s not all about you.”  But it was my birthday.  Mine.  Just mine. For some inexplicable reason, my mother is the least forgiving of my condition; her own fervent love of chocolate seems to dictate that she must hate this small portion of me.

The first time my mother gave me chocolate I was one, and to placate my crying she gave me chocolate to suck on.  She later told me the chocolate only made me cry harder.  As a kid, I refused to eat anything chocolate; though at first my mother thought it was only chocolate bars that I would dislike she soon discovered it was brownies, Fudgesicles, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, Oreos, and any kind of chocolate candy.  I spit every chocolate flavored thing she put into my mouth right back out. The flavor was too rich, too overwhelming, too sickeningly sweet, but at the same time it tasted dirty, as if I had been eating mud.   It was too slick, melted to a point where I couldn’t get the flavor off my tongue or the roof of my mouth.  The color was too reminiscent of poop.

In elementary school my mother was the Parent-Teacher Coordinator, which meant she knew every teacher, every administrator, and most parents at the school.  And worse, it meant that I often had to stay late and sit through intolerably long meetings.  Usually I had a part of my lunch left over or my mother would bring me snacks from home so that I wouldn’t get too hungry.  But one day she forgot, and I’d been hungry that afternoon.  So, while my friends and I were playing games in the library, and getting shushed every two minutes or so, my stomach rumbled so much that I was too distracted to beat my best friend Ryan at Connect Four, something that ordinarily I found extremely easy.

The meeting dragged—evening was rapidly approaching and I hadn’t eaten in hours.  The adults took a break in the meeting to stretch their legs and socialize.  At that moment, another member of the PTA burst into the room, carrying what I immediately recognized as an enormous brownie pan.  I prayed for something other than brownies, something I’d find edible.

“Hey everyone!  Sorry I’m late, but I was catering an event.  I brought leftovers though!”  I rushed over, unaware of the horror that awaited me, and pulled the tin foil off the top of the pan.  Inside was the Hershey’s bar of my nightmares: a slab of absolutely disgusting solid chocolate.  I stepped back while the other kids I had been playing with jumped forward in delight.  It seemed the entire room was surging toward the center table for chocolate while I retreated, nauseated.  I turned around the room, stomach growling, looking for my mother.  Finally I found her, standing with a few other parents, snacking contentedly on the chocolate.

I rushed over to her and the other adults she was with.

“Mom.”  No response.  “Mom.”  Still nothing.  “Mom.  Mom.  Mo-om.  Mom!  Mom?  Mom.”

“WHAT?”  Oops.  Sheepishly, I continued, though I knew it was an extremely bad decision.

“I’m hungry.”

“So eat some of the food.”  She turned back to the conversation.

“Ew.  I hate chocolate.”  The other parents she was with all turned to me in shock.  I always hated the reactions I got, the questions and the astonishment, so I walked away without pressing my mother further.  Dejected and still hungry, I returned to the kids’ table.  The game I had been playing with Ryan sat in front of me, abandoned by him in favor of licking his fingers clean before consuming the second piece of chocolate lying on the napkin in front of him.

“Where’s yours?”  He asked.  I had told Ryan I didn’t like chocolate, but he frequently forgot.

“I don’t like chocolate, remember?”  His other friend Matt, sitting behind him, savoring a piece of chocolate, snapped to attention at this.

“What are you an idiot?  Chocolate is awesome!  People who don’t like chocolate are stupid. I bet you’re one of those people who likes vanilla, huh?”

“No.”

“So you just don’t like anything?”

“There’s more than just chocolate and vanilla stupid.  I like strawberry.”

“Chocolate is better.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Uh huh.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Whoever thinks that chocolate is better than strawberry raise your hand.”  Of course, as was almost inevitable, every hand at the table immediately shot into the air.  I sighed and looked away.

“You were wrong!”  He teased me.

“Shut up!”  I yelled.

“You shut up!”

“You shut up!”  Our voices must have reached a level above the murmur of conversation, because before he could even begin to push what I’m sure was a glaringly brilliant retort off the tip of his tongue, my mother’s voice resounded from across the room.

“Kelsey!”  Everyone froze, the sudden increase in volume stunning them all into silence.  The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention while I swiveled around slowly to face what I already knew was going to mean trouble.

A minute later I was sitting at a small desk in the opposite corner of the room, separated from my peers and their parents for two simple reasons: the words “shut up” which had placed me in that chair, and the dislike of chocolate which had set me apart.  With the meeting resumed and the parents’ and teachers’ attention once again diverted, I looked longingly over to the other kids, still licking their fingers and slowly sneaking back to the main table in order to grab more chunks of chocolate.  The only sounds in the room besides the voices of the meeting’s speakers were the smacking sound of everyone around me licking their lips and the snap of someone biting into a new piece of chocolate.

Completely alone, sitting in the corner with fingers unstained by sticky, warm, gooey chocolate, having been called stupid and an idiot, I watched everyone else enjoy themselves while my stomach continued to rumble.  Not for the first or last time I found myself wondering, why can’t I just be like everyone else?