A Piece Chocolate

COTTLE, THOMAS J.

A PIECE CHOCOLATE THOMAS COTTLE I was walking with Sam Fishman one afternoon. Suddenly Sam had a sudden urge, a noops, he called it, for chocolate. "Oi, do I need chocolate," I heard him say. "Got...

...Chocolate...
...I want small, you got big, I ain't buying...
...I had seen nothing at all funny in the scene...
...I'm sixty-eight years old...
...Do you have chocolate?' you asked...
...At mil age...
...A pair of schmucks...
...You know how many kinds of chocolate there are in the world...
...We got to find a store...
...Look, mister," he began, it was his last charge of the battle...
...You know how many people...
...He reports regularly in these pages on his encounters with real people...
...One could barely discern the outlines of his eyes...
...You want a little piece of chocolate...
...Just big bars...
...He was panting like a horse at a water hole...
...Forty-five cents for one lousy bite...
...Just big bars...
...Yes I have chocolate,' I said...
...Enraged, Sam wouldn't let the man finish speaking...
...Maybe you're pregnant, Sam," I joked...
...With pleasure," Sam countered, turning quickly to leave the store...
...Yeah, but I'm not going to...
...Chocolate...
...No small pieces...
...I'm interested in one thing...
...Anything can be in the inside, just as long as the outside's chocolate...
...I wanted a taste, not a whole dinner...
...Let me have a small candy," Sam ordered...
...I had the noops, but I had to be stopped...
...A little stinky taste, a bite, a mouthful, one crummy chew which doesn't stick to your teeth...
...You wanted chocolate, didn't you...
...Run along if you have to, I can't go home 'til I find chocolate...
...Of course 1 got chocolate...
...You must be kidding...
...So I let him stop me...
...Then Sam was laughing out loud...
...You don't have something small...
...he asked, in a strangely seductive tone...
...You came in, you asked for chocolate...
...Sam was growing angry, but not as angry as the proprietor, a short, fat man with thick glasses...
...You think with my teeth, stomach, heart, pancreas, liver, blood, brain, I should cheat on my diet and have the slightest taste of chocolate...
...Oi, you're not on a diet too...
...wasn't going to stop me...
...You did...
...Come on, I'm dying for chocolate...
...Thomas Cottle is Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School...
...Did I fool him or did I fool him," he was saying trying to catch his breath...
...Got to have some chocolate...
...Isn't that amazing how one minute you're fine, and the next minute you have a real compelling need for something, like chocolate...
...As we reached the door we heard the proprietor say: "Schmuck...
...Sam didn't bat an eye...
...Already, I noticed his need was being expressed in the past tense...
...Forty-five cents...
...Go away," the man shouted angrily, and turned his back on us...
...Size...
...Pregnant...
...You got chocolate...
...Forty-five cents...
...Now it has to be a special kind of chocolate...
...I figured a store like that, he'd never have a small piece of chocolate like I wanted...
...He is the author of Children in Jail (Beacon Press) and Private Lives and Public Accounts (University of Massachusetts Press...
...I don't care about how many different kinds of chocolate there are...
...I wanted chocolate, yeah, but a little piece...
...We entered a package store and Sam, like a man with an addiction, literally ran to the man at the counter...
...You weren't going to stop me...
...Of course I fooled him...
...No small candies," the proprietor announced, unmoved by Sam's need, or the charade...
...Now, that store over there," Sam was pointing across the street where a little blue light twinkled in the window, "that store's got it...

Vol. 3 • October 1978 • No. 10


 
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