You’ll only end up wearing it

6/6/2006

Whoever said you can never go home again was dead right—when it comes to a Cherry Blossom.

When I was a skinny, freckle-faced boy, summer meant the chance to cash in a winter’s worth of pop bottles. It was the next best thing to an allowance, which, I was told, was something good little boys got when they cleared the dinner table or kept their room clean. At least I had pop bottles.

Back then, pop bottles were made of glass, and they were worth money, which kept them out of landfills, leaving more space at the dump for dirty diapers, potato peels, and broken television sets.

Any pop bottle money I collected I was allowed to spend on candy, and one of my favourites was the Cherry Blossom, a massive 45 gram chocolate covered cherry, packed with sulphites, corn syrup and invert sugar; just what every growing boy needs.

As far as chocolate bars go, it was too awkward to eat all in one bite, and you had to find a way to attack it without getting covered in cherry syrup.

Scientists studied the Cherry Blossom for years, and every test result proved it was impossible to eat one without winding up a sticky, grinning mess.

Whenever I arrived home with a Cherry Blossom, my Dad would send up a warning of “you’ll only end up wearing it”, and each time I was determined to finally get the better of the old man, the scientists, and that unholy candy. Each time I failed.

Last week, I bought my first Cherry Blossom after a layoff of about 25 years or more. I was amazed at how nothing had changed; not the packaging, the size, the sugar content, nor the candy itself. It was as if time has stood still in the land of chocolate.

If the product hadn’t changed in 25 years, surely I had, and I was convinced I could finally get the better of that sticky, sweet gob of goo. Wrong again. Look up the word fool in the dictionary, and you’ll find a picture of me holding a Cherry Blossom.

I started in on the thing by nibbling some of the chocolate off the top, then a little more, then more.

The people of Pompeii had more warning when Vesuvius erupted than I had when the top flew off that monstrosity. As if packed under pressure by some grinning, mean-spirited Hershey factory worker, the syrup flooded out like molten lava.

Once the pressure was released, the sides of the chocolate cup crumbled instantly. In a flash, I had the pink syrup, which is strangely like hydraulic fluid and only slightly less toxic, oozing down my hands, chin, and the front of my shirt. The main flow headed straight for my elbows, and any attempts to stop its advance only made it worse.

In the end, I had learned three things: the Cherry Blossom has not changed because it is the perfect creation of an evil genius, you’ll only end up wearing it, and you can never go home again.