Death WITH chocolate

Lawrence Toppman

Not Death BY Chocolate, a dessert enjoyed by those whom the gods have blessed. This is a long-held dream of my father's: To find out that he has a fatal disease with a modestly long run-up, say six months.

His doctor will say, "Mr. Toppman, you are fatally ill but will not experience discomfort for quite a while, and your appetite will remain good. Feel free to eat anything you like with no anxiety about harm to yourself."

Now, Dad realizes that any such disease will probably have side effects that prevent him from appreciating the stream of cakes, pies, donuts and cheesecakes scheduled to go down his gullet. But he has lofty ambitions.

I'm not commenting on the validity of his dreams: I think he still vaguely hopes I'll attend law school, and we see how THAT turned out. But with that kind of guilt-free mass consumption held up as an ideal, is it any wonder that I was a stout youngster? Food became not just a reward for me but something that assumed an unusually high prominence in life. That's the feeling I've been trying to jettison for the last 11 months.