Kim Dalton

English 101

Mrs. Myers

18 February, 1999

It’s Chocolate

"Ring!" The last bell that summer school day rang and I was already rushing out the heavy school doors eager to get home. The reason for my rush was the recent arrival of my Filipino Grandmother and Grandfather to the States. As I ran on the hard sidewalk puffing to get home, I thought about what new and exciting things I was going to do with them today.

After about a 10-minute run, I finally rounded the corner onto Ohio Avenue and jogged up to my middle-of-the-block blue house. I opened my door and slammed it shut.

"I’m home!" I yelled –it was more of a croak a croak after all my hard running. I was not quite oriented and I nearly stumbled on a wooden stool while I was walking in the kitchen. I decided to get some ice water to ease my throat before I collapsed with a tired sigh into one of the three wooden chairs that surrounded the large, also wooden, kitchen table.

I rested a bit and then got up awkwardly, my legs still stiff from the long run home, and pondered what I could eat. I walked across the tiled kitchen floor to the refrigerator and pulled its door open. The air was cool on my face, and I stood there a moment. There were many items to choose from, but something in the corner caught my attention. I grasped it and shut the refrigerator door with a swoosh.

I stared down at the object in my hands. It was a shiny, small, red-white-and-blue box with a picture of a chocolate bar on it. I knew at once that it was food since it had been in the refrigerator, but it struck me as odd that it was packaged and sealed. I quickly observed, however, that it had been previously opened. This banished all thoughts of doubt in my mind. After all, if it was not good, why had someone eaten it?

I opened the end of the box and let its contents fall on to the table. "It isn’t just food," I thought. "It’s chocolate!" It was true that it looked exactly like a Hershey’s bar, but it had a different symbol where the "Hershey" should have been. I looked closer and read "Ex-Lax." Without thinking, I started to break off chunks of chocolate, and I stuffed them in my mouth. As I ate the stuff, I noticed that it did not taste very good but, knowing it was chocolate, I ate on.

My grandmother, who had been folding clothes in the living room walked in to the kitchen to find out what was keeping me so preoccupied. I offered her some of the chocolate, and she ate it too, though only a little. Soon after I had devoured half the box of Ex-Lax, I heard my mother’s truck park at the front of the house. Both my mother and father came out, and I ran to greet them.

When we were all inside, I told my mom I had found some good candy and tried to get my mom to eat some of the "chocolate." When she saw the box, the questions began to pour in. "How much have you eaten? Do you feel okay? How long have you been eating them?" I told her that I found the box in the refrigerator and had eaten half the chocolate.

Before I knew what was happening, I was being rushed to the emergency room of Oak Hill Hospital. My mother told me I had eaten medicine, diarrhea medicine, and almost a whole box at that!

When I got inside the ER, I sat and waited. I began to shiver. As soon as mom told them what was the matter, they started giving me weird medicine to make me bring up the Ex-Lax. They also put a tube up my nose, down my throat, and into my stomach, and started pumping the remaining stuff out. I could hardly breathe. The worst part of the episode was that I had to wait an entire hour before I could eat anything.

When I was all better and safe at home, I took all twenty of the Mr. Yuck stickers that had been given to me at school and plastered the box of Ex-Lax with them. I vowed never to eat anything that I was not sure of again.