Earlier this evening, I stopped in at a supermarket for a few items. There were two guys there buying chocolate.
I don't mean they were buying a couple of pieces of chocolate. I don't even mean they were buying a lot of chocolate. I mean they were buying all the chocolate. Their actions were as if someone had handed them ten thousand dollars in cash and said, "Here — get every piece of chocolate they have in that store."
The men were in their twenties, I'd guess. Each had a shopping cart and they'd cleaned out the candy aisle, grabbing every Nestlé's Crunch, every Ghirardelli bar, every Hershey's Kiss, every Toberlone product, every M. Then, I was told, they went over to the aisle with the baking supplies and took every Toll House morsel and chip and bar of baking chocolate. When I saw them, they were going to the racks at each checkout aisle and taking every chocolate bar from those displays. I would guess they had well over 800 bars or bags of chocolate in their carts and they weren't done yet. They were asking store employees if there was any more chocolate anywhere in the store. I had the feeling they were about to start scraping it off the Cocoa Krispies.
As I got into the checkout line, the clerk, the bagger and a few customers were wondering aloud just why these two fellows needed so much chocolate. Someone speculated that they were going to melt it all down to make some sort of sculpture or chocolate fountain. Someone else pointed out that they were buying bars that were full of raisins and nuts and fruit fillings. "You wouldn't use those if you were melting it all down," he theorized. Then a balding store employee came by and informed us, "I asked them what it was all for and they wouldn't tell me."
I wish I could tell you the answer but I have no idea. I was hoping someone who reads this weblog might have an idea. Why would someone buy that much chocolate?