9:16 p.m. - 17 September 2002
M&Ms
I'm being laughed at. It's not the first time. It almost certainly won't be the last, either. And it's all because of M&Ms.
I have a strange way of eating M&Ms -- or so I've been told. It's never seemed anything other than perfectly normal to me. Whenever I get a bag of them -- or even a handful out of a large bag -- I organize them by color. Then I line them up in two rows; singles rest in the middle on the top. They are eaten, mostly one or two at a time, in order of fewest to most by color. If two colors have the same number, then I go to alphabetical order. Red ones are always last, originally because red was the new color but now because red is my favorite color.
Today was the first time that some of my officemates have seen the process by which I eat M&Ms. It's generally considered highly amusing. Of course, all they see are the little rows of them lined up on my desk; then when I explain the whole convoluted process, they tend to think I'm nuts. I once had an officemate give me a two pound bag for my birthday with the thought that I would organize the lot of them at once; she was disappointed to learn that I'd only do them a handful or two at a time.
And it's not just M&Ms. Skittles, Reese's Pieces, anything, really, that has a bunch of colors: they all get the divide and conquer treatment. For years I thought I was the only one -- my family thinks it's bizarre -- but not too long ago there was a discussion on one of the message boards I read about odd ways of eating and someone else mentioned that they eat M&Ms the exact same way. Well, except for the red ones being last. But really, that's because they taste best.
