The M&M Theory
TODAY everyone has a theory—and most have a book—about how to be
successful: The Success Book: The Secret to Happiness and Success; The Genius in All of Us. In all of this rush for self-motivation and finding the secrets to success, we have
forgotten one thing: the power of M&Ms.
Do you remember when you first saw M&Ms? Someone put a few red and
orange and brown pearls in your hand. Despite the “melts in your mouth, not in your
hand” slogan, you soon had little islands of red and yellow in the center of chocolate
pools coating your hands.
I loved M&M’s immediately for their colors. I would sort them into little hills
of lipstick red, canary yellow, Christmas-tree green, and basic brown. Then I would
munch my way through the boring hills of brown, the so-so yellows, the verdant
greens, saving the Santa Claus reds for last. Of course, there were never enough reds.
I always wondered why they made so many dull, dirt-colored browns, but that didn’t
stop me from eating them.
Although it is somewhat barbaric, like eating a grasshopper, I love to hold a
single M&M on my tongue and gently press as the outer shell cracks and the
chocolate explodes, a firecracker of flavor. When I am deep into a writing project,
adding and deleting, trying a word here, exploding a scene there, a few reds and greens
unlock words like ambergris and ambrosia, syzygy and effigy. I especially like M&Ms
when I am trying to create a new assignment or am writing to a deadline. When Bob
and Vanna (trust me, these are their real names) come around to empty my garbage at
work, they can gauge my day by what’s in the can. “Tough day, today?” they might ask
if M&M wrappers pour out of the can.
Despite all the personal evidence I’ve amassed, I’ve never seen a major study
explaining the secret power of M&Ms. I think we have grossly underestimated the good that can come from judicious M&M use. Why, I even potty trained my kids
using M&Ms:
gathered for family night where we sang a hymn, presented a religious lesson and then
played games and had treats. It wasn’t easy for five rambunctious children to quit
poking each other while saying brotherly and sisterly phrases, like “If your bum wasn’t
so big we could all fit on the couch” or “You sound like a sick cow when you sing.”
Once again, it was M&Ms to the rescue. I would tell a Bible story and ask them simple
questions, and, you guessed it, the child who answered got an M&M. It gave me a
feeling of power, of pride in my well-behaved and brilliant children, as they raptly
watched me and responded enthusiastically. Oh, if there were only an M&M fix for
teenagers!
Originally, M&Ms came in yellow, red, green, light brown, and dark brown.
Now you can buy aqua green, silver, gold, or maroon M&Ms. You can even have your
face imprinted on your M&Ms! And yet, they are still called plain M&Ms. The word
plain connotes ordinary, basic, bare, boring. Maybe the person who labeled them plain
wanted to keep the little saucer-shaped morsels to herself.
I’m not quite sure what is so magical about the so-called plain M&M. Over the
years I have considered other candies--Snickers or Lemonheads or Tootsie Rolls--but
they seem like unworthy substitutes. A Snickers bar has more calories than a package
of M&Ms, 271 for Snickers and 236 for M&Ms, but a Snickers bar lacks the festive
colors, the anticipatory crunch, and the rush of chocolate flavor. It seems like a
plebian bar that you would buy to increase your stamina while hiking, not for such
silo
8
intellectually stimulating tasks as determining whether you should be using “affect” or
“effect” for best effect (or is that affect?). Lemonheads are everlasting—you can suck
on them for hours, a slow, steady infusion of sugar to the brain and a heyday for
dental caries, but they lack the jolt of chocolate to jumpstart a sluggish brain delivered
by the M&M morsel. And Tootsie Rolls don’t have moxie. How can I decide whether
to send my story to the Twin Fall's Times-News or Glimmertrain while chewing on a
lowly Tootsie Roll, the candy deglamorized as a result of thousands of households
dispensing them as cheap trick-or-treat candy. These other wannabe candies lack the
mystery, the inscrutability (see what M&Ms can do for your brain, to say nothing of
your vocabulary), the exquisite melding of the Easter egg and the chocolate bunny.
Hey, pass the M&Ms.
TODAY everyone has a theory—and most have a book—about how to be
successful: The Success Book: The Secret to Happiness and Success; The Genius in All of Us. In all of this rush for self-motivation and finding the secrets to success, we have
forgotten one thing: the power of M&Ms.
Do you remember when you first saw M&Ms? Someone put a few red and
orange and brown pearls in your hand. Despite the “melts in your mouth, not in your
hand” slogan, you soon had little islands of red and yellow in the center of chocolate
pools coating your hands.
I loved M&M’s immediately for their colors. I would sort them into little hills
of lipstick red, canary yellow, Christmas-tree green, and basic brown. Then I would
munch my way through the boring hills of brown, the so-so yellows, the verdant
greens, saving the Santa Claus reds for last. Of course, there were never enough reds.
I always wondered why they made so many dull, dirt-colored browns, but that didn’t
stop me from eating them.
Although it is somewhat barbaric, like eating a grasshopper, I love to hold a
single M&M on my tongue and gently press as the outer shell cracks and the
chocolate explodes, a firecracker of flavor. When I am deep into a writing project,
adding and deleting, trying a word here, exploding a scene there, a few reds and greens
unlock words like ambergris and ambrosia, syzygy and effigy. I especially like M&Ms
when I am trying to create a new assignment or am writing to a deadline. When Bob
and Vanna (trust me, these are their real names) come around to empty my garbage at
work, they can gauge my day by what’s in the can. “Tough day, today?” they might ask
if M&M wrappers pour out of the can.
Despite all the personal evidence I’ve amassed, I’ve never seen a major study
explaining the secret power of M&Ms. I think we have grossly underestimated the good that can come from judicious M&M use. Why, I even potty trained my kids
using M&Ms:
- sitting on the potty, 2 M&Ms
- going potty, 5 M&Ms
- flushing, 2 M&Ms
- washing hands, 2 M&Ms
gathered for family night where we sang a hymn, presented a religious lesson and then
played games and had treats. It wasn’t easy for five rambunctious children to quit
poking each other while saying brotherly and sisterly phrases, like “If your bum wasn’t
so big we could all fit on the couch” or “You sound like a sick cow when you sing.”
Once again, it was M&Ms to the rescue. I would tell a Bible story and ask them simple
questions, and, you guessed it, the child who answered got an M&M. It gave me a
feeling of power, of pride in my well-behaved and brilliant children, as they raptly
watched me and responded enthusiastically. Oh, if there were only an M&M fix for
teenagers!
Originally, M&Ms came in yellow, red, green, light brown, and dark brown.
Now you can buy aqua green, silver, gold, or maroon M&Ms. You can even have your
face imprinted on your M&Ms! And yet, they are still called plain M&Ms. The word
plain connotes ordinary, basic, bare, boring. Maybe the person who labeled them plain
wanted to keep the little saucer-shaped morsels to herself.
I’m not quite sure what is so magical about the so-called plain M&M. Over the
years I have considered other candies--Snickers or Lemonheads or Tootsie Rolls--but
they seem like unworthy substitutes. A Snickers bar has more calories than a package
of M&Ms, 271 for Snickers and 236 for M&Ms, but a Snickers bar lacks the festive
colors, the anticipatory crunch, and the rush of chocolate flavor. It seems like a
plebian bar that you would buy to increase your stamina while hiking, not for such
silo
8
intellectually stimulating tasks as determining whether you should be using “affect” or
“effect” for best effect (or is that affect?). Lemonheads are everlasting—you can suck
on them for hours, a slow, steady infusion of sugar to the brain and a heyday for
dental caries, but they lack the jolt of chocolate to jumpstart a sluggish brain delivered
by the M&M morsel. And Tootsie Rolls don’t have moxie. How can I decide whether
to send my story to the Twin Fall's Times-News or Glimmertrain while chewing on a
lowly Tootsie Roll, the candy deglamorized as a result of thousands of households
dispensing them as cheap trick-or-treat candy. These other wannabe candies lack the
mystery, the inscrutability (see what M&Ms can do for your brain, to say nothing of
your vocabulary), the exquisite melding of the Easter egg and the chocolate bunny.
Hey, pass the M&Ms.