Sweet Jesus.

For Valentine's Day, the kids gave me a big Reese's Cup shaped like a heart. It's about the size of my fist and weighs about the same as a couple inches of ass fat. Of course, I'm eating it. Slowly. Eaten in one sitting, something like that could send a perfectly healthy person into permanent diabetic shock, and clog every artery in and outside of my body. Not only would my heart stop beating, and my brain stop functioning, but highways would be tied up for miles and the Hoover Dam would stop producing energy.

As a kid, chocolate was one of my four basic food groups, along with sugar-infused breakfast cereal, spaghetti, and Pixie Sticks. I remember licking the bowl and the mixer blades after my grandmother mixed the batter for her chocolate cake. Oh, crap, was that freakin' good. Except for the one time when the mixer was still on.

The family would pile in the car every summer and head out to Hersheypark, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. A whole damn town dedicated to the ideals and worldwide contributions of chocolate. Sweet Jesus! Yeah, they had one of those, too. You could eat the head off it, like the bunnies at Easter. Anyway, you would get within a mile of the chocolate factory and the air would be thick with the glorious scent of cocoa. The sweet, beautiful perfume that attracts pimpled-faced teens and flabby housewives from all over the country. Oh, sure, there were amusement rides and shows, but that all took a backseat to the tour of the chocolate factory. Pools of chocolate being mixed in giant vats. I imagined myself being Augustus Gloop, diving into the Willie Wonka's lake of chocolate. Okay, so I was a weird kid.

Easter was always a good time for ODing on chocolate. Even that cheap, waxy, imitation chocolate flavored chocolate they make those Dollar Store bunnies with would do in times of choco-crisis. I mean, it kind of felt like chocolate in your mouth, and there was a taste resembling chocolate, but when the Hershey's and Reese's were gone, a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, right?

Today, chocoholics are trying to find any possible way to ensure that chocolate isn't relegated to the list of "stuff that's so bad for you we have to get the government to issue laws changing how you make it." I would hate to see chocolate go the way of movie popcorn, fried chicken and trans fats. So now, they've found that dark chocolate provides anti-oxidants, and it's good to have a little each day. I would have loved to be in that room when they came up with that one. What's next? Milk chocolate with almonds can help urinary tract infections? Baby Ruth bars restore hair? Mounds relieve gout?

So, I will go on enjoying this gift from my kids for as long as I can. A little in the morning, a bite in the afternoon. And probably will be done it just in time for the Easter candy to show up. Oh, sweet Jesus. Mmmmm, really sweet.