My friend Michelle absolutely blew my mind over sushi Saturday night. Some back-story, I believe, is in order:

Although she denies it now, I am absolutely positive that my mother told me that I was allergic to chocolate milk. As I’m sure you can guess, this has left me with more than a little childhood trauma. I can distinctly remember a number of instances when, getting my lunch in the cafeteria, they were out of regular milk and only had chocolate left. I recall looking at one side of the ice tray, devoid of the pure white variety; and, then looking at the other, brimming over with what I thought was terribly poisonous chocolate death. In those cases, I would simply go without, waiting until recess to drink some water out of the fountain. There was even a time when I picked up a chocolate milk by mistake, tried to exchange it but was denied, and ended up giving it away to some greedy kid, watching him happily slurp down, what was to me, a forbidden treasure.

As I said, my mom now denies all of this, and claims total amnesia on the subject.

Anyway, there’s still a part of me that believes I’m allergic to chocolate milk (plus my real allergy to penicillin), and I for some reason was relaying this entire story to my aforementioned friend, Michelle. She nodded politely through the boring parts, laughed at the funny parts, and then started the conversation that hit me like a ton of bricks:

Michelle: “So, what did you think you were allergic to, the chocolate or the milk?”
Dave: “Err…what?!”
M: “What did you think you were allergic to? You know chocolate milk is just regular milk with chocolate in it, right?”
D: “Regular milk with…huh?”
M: “Are you allergic to milk?”
D: “N-no…”
M: “Are you allergic to chocolate?”
D: “Uh, no.”
M: “Then why would you be allergic to chocalte milk?!”
D: “Uh, err, wha..? Umm, but see…uh, gahhh…”

Excuse me, while I kiss the sky….