my lunatic friends
Imagine, if you will, that you are in another city, wherein there is a chocolatier who sells the most divine hot chocolate you have ever tasted — thick and rich and beautifully bitter as the best dark chocolate can be. And you intended, while there, to go and buy more of their mix, so that you can continue to enjoy this divinity while at home . . . but alas, you planned poorly, and you will not have an opportunity to go there and buy.
Imagine that you mention this to your friends while sitting around and packing picnic baskets for that afternoon’s wedding.
Imagine — if you can — that not only will one of your friends take the time to go by that chocolatier before the wedding, but that the one who will take the time to arrange this is the groom himself, who really ought to have other things on his mind.
And then — because we’re not done yet! — imagine that you mentioned, during that conversation, the exorbitant price charged by the chocolatier if you order the five-pound bag of mix online (some of the exorbitancy stemming from the chocolate, some from the shipping charges), and that said groom friend gets it into his head that you intended to buy a five-pound bag (instead of the rather more reasonable two-pound bag), and therefore, during the picnic following his wedding, presents you with a sack containing two two-pound bags and one one-pound bag (owing to a lack of five-pound bags in the store), accompanied by the words “Happy Birthday.”
Thus did I acquire an absurd amount of Burdick’s hot chocolate, from a friend whose mind really really ought to have been on things closer to home. But I’m grateful to him anyway, and am now equipped to hand out samples of this divinity to all and sundry, for about the next three years.
