Choco­late.

It’s al­most a dirty word.

You can feel it melt­ing in your mouth, even now, days since you’ve had your last.

You need it.

You need it right now.

And you want it.

So, of course, you have it.

You put a square in your mouth. It melts–ever so slowly. Ever so per­fectly.

Creamy. Choco­latey. A hint of bit­ter­ness–but not too much. It just melts away.

You don’t even have to chew.

You like choco­late in all its forms, but this–solid, per­fectly creamy choco­late–re­ally takes the cake.

Cake. That’s good too. Choco­late cake. Choco­late cake with choco­late ic­ing.

You fig­ure you’ll have some, so you do.

Still not as good as that creamy choco­late, bought by the chunk. If you could buy a life­time sup­ply, you would in an in­stant.

But that would­n’t be prac­ti­cal.

Much more prac­ti­cal: or­der­ing a life­time sup­ply of party hats.

You fig­ure you’ll live to nine thou­sand four hun­dred and eighty-three–give or take a year–so you’ll need ap­prox­i­mately… nine thou­sand four hun­dred and sev­enty-four.

Wait.

You re­al­ly suck at math. Well, not suck. You just make mis­takes, and of­ten.

Iron­i­cally, you un­der­stand math pretty well. You’d prob­a­bly be great if you prac­ticed.

But that would be bor­ing. You don’t do bor­ing.

No. It would be nine thou­sand four hun­dred and sev­enty-three, right?

As­sum­ing one per year.

Why limit your­self to one party per year? Why not one per day?

But that goes be­yond your abil­ity for in-your-head math, so you de­cide to or­der enough for one a year, at least for the time be­ing.

You won­der if you should just wear the party hat one day a year, or if you should wear the same hat all-year-around. It’s a tough dilemma. One way, the hat will get quite worn and dirty. The other… well, you’re with­out a hat.

You know what sounds good?

A hat made of choco­late.

If your hat were made of choco­late, you cer­tainly would­n’t com­plain about eat­ing it.