Inquiring minds have been asking about Peeps. Did I actually eat them? What did I think? How would I describe them?
I did indeed try the Peeps, just after posting the last blog in fact. I slid my fingers under the plastic, breaking into it from the side, making sure to tilt the box so that the radiation-orange sugar spilled to the other side without escaping all over the floor. The plastic pulled back just enough to reach two fingers in, I went for a marshmallow chick. They looked far more menacing and surreal than I’d realized at first. Their beaks often curling strangely back under and little brown points for eyes started straight ahead despite literally being attached at the hip to one another. My thumb and index pinched together over one of the little orange creations and pulled him away from his friends, revealing a torn white patch on his side where he had moments before been cozied up to his neighbor. Then I took a bite, head first I think.
It was horrible.
I could feel my face scrunching up into a look of surprised horror. I knew they were not good, but I thought it would be in a “haha, they are so bad for me, but they are so bad they are good!” kind of way. No. Whatever dye they use to color the chicks in their strange neon colors cannot be made of anything that comes from nature. The taste is sweet but nothing from this world. The sugar crunches and the marshmallow dissolves at first bite and it is a most disturbing textual sensation of things in your teeth but also disappearing without any effort on your own part. For some reason, I finished that first Peep, then after cleansing my mouth with water, I, crazily, reached for another just to confirm that it really is as bad as it seemed. It was. More water and my chocolate Easter bunny lost his ears for the sake of my palate’s purity. The plastic was pulled back over the evilly glowing chicks and they were shoved into the cabinet, the door slammed after them.
To my shame, and great confusion, that was not the end of the Peeps. Perhaps if I had been sensible and just thrown the demonic things in the trash where they belong I would have been safe but that was not the case. For the next several days Peeps kept disappearing from the cabinet. One by one I’d pull them away from their friends, the marshmallow at their sides stretching then breaking free to be shoved in my guilty mouth. One by one till they were all gone, nothing left but the plastic, their little cardboard box and a bunch of disturbingly colored sugar. I was tempted to put them in the microwave, as I did with marshmallows as a child. I never did, but watched a friend sacrifice one of his pink chicks to the radiation and watched as it grew, expanding out from the exposed marshmallow on its sides, the rest held in check by the sugar crystals, to then deflate as soon as the power was off.
The Peep deflated and thankfully so has my fascination with the little creatures. Thank goodness, I’m home free, at least for another year.
