The World's Finest Chocolate Bar

I could hear her voice as it carried through the kitchen. "Mike! Mike!" I stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. I had to come clean. Or did I? Maybe - if I waited her out - she'd get distracted and leave the room. Or maybe she'd think I was in my bedroom and would head that way instead. Then I'd be able to slip out unnoticed and escape to safety in the back yard...

I peaked through the narrow slits in the pantry doors. I was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to see me from here. After all, it was nearly pitch dark where I stood. Silence. And then I heard it. Whimpering at my feet. I glanced down at a cute fur ball of a mutt scratching at the the pantry door. My Golden Retriever puppy, Jack. Trying to rat me out to the dreaded Mom, trying to lead her to where I wasn't supposed to be...

I eased onto my nine-year-old hands and knees on the opposite side of the cedar door, almost inaudibly whispering, "No! Stop it! Go away!" But he was a persistent little pup. I glanced behind me to where the half-eaten World's Finest Chocolate Bar with Almonds lay exposed on top of the box freezer where we kept the whole lot of them. The silver wrapper glinted in the soft light trickling in from the slitted doors. I was screwed.

I turned back to Jack just as a pair of feet appeared next to him. A woman's hand scooped up the little guy as I scrambled to my feet, holding my breath. I peaked through the door. There she was: Mom. She stood there, petting Jack, a knowing grin on her face. Quietly she asked, "Mike... are you in there?"

I contemplated not responding. Contemplated scrambling for cover behind the coat rack, burying myself from view. But it was useless. I slowly pushed open the door and stood there, guilty. Chocolate caked my face, stuck to my fingers. I smiled a chocolate stained smile at Mom, as if to say, truce.

Let's just say: she wasn't pleased.

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The World's Finest Chocolate Bar was the annual Little League fundraiser throughout my childhood. Every year, around the fourth or fifth week of the season, Coach would tote an enormous cardboard box of those things from his pickup truck to the dugout and give a package of twenty to each of us. Our mission - and we had to accept it - was to sell all twenty by the end of the season. Usually, there were one or two overachievers who would manage to sell them to his buddies at school. One year, I had some minor success hawking them at my church. Old people are always suckers for these things; I think it's the combo of helping a youngster as well as eating some chocolate. However, more often than not, Mom and Dad ended up buying the majority of the candy bars off their unsuccessful son.

Now, once I reached this point, two things would happen. Dad would remove two or three of them from the package and would place these chosen few in the family freezer in the kitchen to be snacked on at random. I suspect they made many a midnight snack for the parents back then. The rest of the World's Finest Chocolate Bars with Almonds would be stashed in the large box freezer tucked away in the pantry. Buried deep in the freezer alongside jars of Mom's homemade preservatives, pounds of sausage and beef given to us by neighbors that Dad was too polite to say no to, and a seemingly endless supply of patriotic, red-white-and-blue popsicles, the remaining candy bars were listed as "off limits" to my brother and I.

I don't want to paint the picture of myself as a chubby, chocolate loving youngster. I was far from that growing up. My chubby disposition and affinity for all things chocolate didn't rear its lovely head until I was in college. As an adolescent, I was always undersized, skinny as heck. That being said, a candy bar here or there wasn't cause for alarm. It was more about the principle: Mom and Dad forbid me from eating them; could I follow this order?

So, this ample supply of World's Finest Chocolate Bars with Almonds awaited discovery in the family icebox in the pantry. Mom and Dad stored containers full of winter caps and mittens, sports cleats and farm tools, on top of the industrial sized freezer. This, they believed, was a formidable defense against the curious muscles of a nine-year-old son. In retrospect, they weren't far off. If Mom and Dad had left me home alone, I could make as much noise as I wanted trying to move all the objects off the freezer. Under such circumstances, pulling off this candy-heist would have been a piece of cake. Unfortunately, Mom and Dad didn't really trust me. That being said, stealth was my only option...

So, stealing these candy bars became a game of cat and mouse between my mother and I. When she wasn't looking, I would sneak into the pantry, shutting the doors behind me. In near darkness, I would try to move the heavy crates off the icebox without hurting myself or knocking anything else over. More often than not, I would bump a mop or broom over, raising the alarm. Yet sometimes, I maintained anonymity. Once the top of the freezer was clear, I would unlatch it (this thing was old fashioned) and would break the rubber seal. A blast of cold air would hit me as the light came on within. Peaking over the rim, there they were: the box of World's Finest Chocolate Bars.

And so, I reached inside and grabbed one.