I love M&Ms. My friend Foster bet me that I couldn’t eat two-thousand five hundred of them in one sitting. I asked him what he bet. He said that he would give me a life-time supply of M&Ms. But if I couldn’t do it, I would have to quit eating M&Ms and substitute mandrakes. I took the offer. I couldn’t imagine saying, “Enough, no more of my tasty friends.”
Foster went to Target and brought back 125 bags of economy-sized M&Ms. I’d never seen so many at one time. It was like a beautiful field of lilies, but M&Ms. I proceeded. I couldn’t believe how much of a sucker Foster was. I felt a little badly for him. How could he afford to supply me with M&Ms for the rest of my life? What if he were to die soon? Would I inherit the money it would take to keep me in my chocolaty paradise? What’s a mandrake? Then I remembered Harry Potter 6 when the kids pull the live mandrake roots from the potting soil and how loudly they screamed. I imagined the mandrakes in my body, punching the inside of my stomach, trying to get out. I felt dizzy. I passed out.
When I came to I was in the emergency room. They had to pump my stomach. Supposedly when you eat more than a tenth of your weight in chocolate, your stomach collapses and they have to hook it up to a battery charger. The emergency people showed the battery charger to me. It was a Sears Die-Hard battery hooked up to a generator.
A new cookbook is now appearing at your local Barnes & Noble: "101 Ways to Prepare Mandrakes."
Since I lost the bet, I went and got the cookbook. Last night I had, "Mashed Mandrakes". It was like mashed potatoes, but less fun and more dreary. Though now I have plenty of niacin!