What a typical American concept, I thought as I read this prompt from Tyrean Martinson’s book. Marshmallows and hot cocoa. Maybe, these days, it’s something common for kids in Germany as well. In my childhood I knew marshmallows and I knew hot cocoa – but they never came together.
Hot cocoa is an item of torture to me. My stomach doesn’t like milk. It’s the only dairy product it balks at. Yet, my mother religiously had me drink my two cups of hot cocoa every morning up to the age of nine because she said it was healthy. Then she finally relented, admitting that she didn’t like milk, either. Well, it was never a matter of not “liking” milk – I literally gag and my tummy feels as if a rock had entered it that it would love to return. It doesn’t matter what concoction you add – cocoa or strawberry flavored powder, fruit or syrup, whether it’s hot or cold, or fancy foam on a cappuccino. These days I balk at it because I know now that there is something called a milk allergy (not to be mixed up with lactose intolerance).
Like every kid, of course, I loved candy. Marshmallows were an absolute highlight among them. Candy was a rare thing for me as a kid. One or two pieces a day; a marshmallow (I don’t think I even knew the name of that good stuff) was even rarer. Oh, what a feast when my mother bought a bag of those! They came only in one size – that which are used for S’mores over here. And they came in three flavors: vanilla (white), strawberry (pastel pink), and sweet woodruff (pastel green). The green ones were the most coveted ones by most kids. Sweet woodruff is such a German thing that anything flavored like it is special – syrup, Jello, ice cream, sherbet powder, May punch … and marshmallows.
Now, of course, you wouldn’t ever want to waste the strawberry or sweet woodruff flavor on hot cocoa. It would simply not make any sense and probably taste really weird. As kids we might have enjoyed to see something melt in the heat of a beverage – but where would the fun be after it is melted?! In short, marshmallows were the candy toy that you stretched to its limits, that you squeezed to its minimum, a candy that melted in your mouth and stuck on your fingers.
Marshmallows melting in hot cocoa … Nope, not my cup of tea. But that is mixing imagery.
What is YOUR take on the prompt?
