The Merit of Bad Chocolate

Sitting here, eating dinner (my usual, only sans spinach), I look at the ornate glass bowl I inherited from my neighbor-for-a-day, which has chocolate eggs wrapped in those foil colors that look garish at any other time of year. Perhaps in our minds we suspect that, in October, if we purchased them, they would be [stale/old/moldy/dessicated] unfit for human consumption, seeing as how in our minds we associate these chocolates with Eastertide.

To give some background, I bought them for 50% off the Monday after Easter in an ill-advised shopping trip at 7 pm before having dinner. Grocery shopping without having eaten complex carbohydrates (a phrase I used to hate, it having been used too many times to count to lecture/educate me on the needs of my body, when all I wanted to eat was candy, back in the day) in the last 30 minutes before departure is definitely not something I should ever do, and yet I still do it at least bimonthly. I was trying to decide which ones to get, and someone who was probably around my dad's age looked at me and said, "oh, so you're the 50% off after easter chocolate lady," to which I arched an eyebrow and gave a somewhat sardonic smile back and said, "Clearly, that I am." Which I think kind of boggled his mind, as I looked less than respectable (I believe I wasn't even matching) and he was taken aback that someone actually /admitted/ being a 50% off chocolate lady.

 I decided it would be nice to fill my bowl, anyway, after I got them and it was too late to take them back. So I dumped them out and they have been sitting there ever since. I admit I've eaten perhaps a handful since then. But to get to the main point: the merits of bad chocolate are:

1. It's sweet. When you have a craving, it will likely satisfy it.
2. It's slightly sickening. You can taste the wax. Even if it's sitting there, seemingly temptingly winking with those jewel/pastel colored wrappers, you can sniff haughtily and think, "I'm too good for that chocolate. It's not worth the {insert 'calories' or 'sugar crash' here, depending on your preference - I prefer the latter}. I don't need it.
3. It gives people who come over something to do. In absence of a good coffee table book, bad chocolate is nearly always tempting enough to get visitors to have a piece, or two, or three or five, depending on (a) how well they know you; (b) how hungry they are; (c) how their mothers raised them; and (d) how much they like bad chocolate. Absent better conversation, any visitor can always unwrap one, pop it in his/her mouth, and thereby (hopefully politely - smacking lip chocolate eaters are frowned upon by Miss Manners, I'm sure) refrain from carrying on verbally.

Or, if it gets to be October, it can be an instrument of ridicule: When did you buy this chocolate? It's so old! Throw it out already! {Then why did you just have a piece?}

Having pointed out its virtues, I am still going to steadfastly refuse to give in to the siren call of bad (seasonal, which makes it even worse) chocolate.

*Update. My sister W came to visit in July. She said, "Are those from Easter." I said, "Yes, they are." By the end of her visit, they were gone. So! Bad chocolate really DOES have merit!!