For Love of Cadbury Eggs

I haven’t written in a while because life has been crazy and I haven’t felt “the call” to write anything of great significance. But something happened at work today that made me decide to post a “fluff” piece.

A little background … I’m an editor for a curriculum development company, and I’m an unofficial member of the Language Arts team. I absolutely love my teammates. It’s refreshing to be able to “bookworm out” with other English weenies, other people who salivate over Walt Whitman poems, hold lengthy conversations about the symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and dress up as their favorite authors or literary characters for Halloween. Finally, people who are as passionate about literature as I am!

Occasionally, I get to take off my editor’s hat and stretch my writer’s legs. My company is moving toward self-authoring curriculum, meaning that we’re writing our own content instead of relying heavily on online textbooks or video providers for the bulk of our content. That’s A LOT of work, especially for the developers, who are basically teachers turned into authors. Some days, their creative juices just aren’t flowing or they need to put their focus on something other than writing a sample essay/narrative/research paper to put in their course. This means Play Day for the editors, especially the two in the Language Arts team. Don’t get me wrong, we love our jobs as Grammar Nazis, but after a while, we need a break from correcting subject-verb agreement, making sure that pronouns are used properly, and modifying dangling modifiers. So when we get the chance to be on the other side of the developing table, we jump at the chance. A month ago, it (ignore this vague pronoun) was writing a story reflecting themes of Transcendentalism (inspired by a fuzzy caterpillar at a friend’s wedding). Today it was writing a story displaying internal conflict.

A group of us was sitting together at lunch, talking about random crap, and somehow I found myself telling the story of the moment of weakness I’d had the night before at the grocery store when faced with cases of Cadbury eggs that were half price. Now my love of Cadbury eggs rivals that of my love for ice cream, which is saying a lot, so The Grocery Store Incident was painful, to say the least (first world problems). One of the Language Arts developers thought my story was hilarious and made a comment about maybe writing a story on it as an example story for internal conflict in her course. My mind is coming off the incredibly stressful two-month development of another course, so it was not about to have its moment of creativity taken from it. I gobbled up the rest of my lunch and scurried back to my desk, where I composed this little story in five minutes. I’m not planning on becoming a professional writer anytime soon—or at all—but the developer loved it and is planning on using it in her course. Enjoy!

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For Love of Cadbury Eggs

Marci stared at the display before her. The Cadbury eggs called out to her—all bright and shiny in their perfect oval shapes. It was a few days after Easter, and the eggs were $0.24 each, half the price of what she’d spent for the measly five she’d bought for her Easter basket. Marci’s mouth watered as she pictured herself unwrapping an egg, carefully breaking it in two so that just the right amount of cream filling pooled in each half, and then slowly lapping the filling up before biting into the delicious milk chocolate. Her hand reached out toward the display, like an explorer stranded in the desert might reach out toward a mirage of water. Just as her hand grazed the smooth, metallic wrapping of an egg, something snatched her arm back.

What do you think you’re doing?! the little voice in the back of her mind screamed. Those will go straight to your inner thighs!!!

No they won’t! Marci tried to reason with the annoying intruder. I’ve been good about working out … and I’ll limit myself to one a day.

The voice scoffed. Right … it said. Just like you did last year.

Marci started to feel guilty as she remembered a day—no, several days—when she’d snuck a second egg … and moaned on the couch about how awful she felt until the sickening rich feeling left her stomach. She sighed, shifted her grocery basket, and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other as she walked away.

Until next year, she thought, casting one last longing look at the display.