Juniormints.

Okay, first I need to say that I know I should probably be embarrassed by this picture ... I mean, really. Is it necessary to have my mouth hanging open quite so big? But it does illustrate my story so I decided to go ahead and use it. (I have a reputation of being obsessed with juniormints. But in reality, that sort of happened to me in a round about kind of way.)

When I was growing up and our family went to the movies, my sister Leslie would always get juniormints. I preferred either peanut M&Ms or a snickers bar which, in my opinion, are much "meatier" in the chocolate department. I also went through a Mr. Goodbar phase a few years back. I couldn't get enough of them. I had to have one just about every day. And it couldn't be a regular sized Mr. Goodbar, it had to be a king sized Mr. Goodbar. The king sized tastes SO much better - much meatier, and if you're going to be eating a treat it may as well be worth those calories, right?! I learned, at that time, that not all grocery stores and convenience stores carry the king sized though ... but it didn't take me too long to become familiar with which ones did.

It was shortly after my divorce when my friend Wendi and I decided to become serious dieters. We started to have juniormints as our treat - since they were so much lower in fat grams. (A regular box of juniormints only has about 4 grams of fat as opposed to other candy bars which have around 11 or 12 grams.) If we went to the movies (and we went to a lot of movies back then), instead of getting the usual - popcorn, peanut M&Ms, and a large diet coke, we would get a box of juniormints and a large bottled water. For us, that was a serious cut back.

I used to buy a case of them at Costco and keep them around at home too, for those times when that chocolate urge hit. Some were in the freezer (yum) and some were in the cupboard. My kids got used to having them available at all times.

Wendi and I had a guy friend, we'll call him Brad, who was pretty into health and nutrition. It seemed like everytime we were around him we were eating juniormints, or would stop and get some. In fact, he asked me what my email address was one time and I told him I didn't have one yet. He said, "Okay, then I am going to set one up for you. Your new email address is: juniormints@hotmail.com." For real.

He tried SOOOO hard to convince us that it really wasn't any better to be eating juniormints because they were loaded with sugar!!!! We just kept saying that they were lower in fat and thus they were much more of a "diet candy" instead of a candy bar. It made Brad a little bit crazy. In fact, at one get together he actually took our juniormints and put several boxes in the trash because he was just so frustrated with us.

That was seriously not cool. So Wendi and I decided that we would have a little fun with Brad. We went to Kinko's and had the box of juniormints blown up to poster size. We made about 4 copies and before he got into his office one morning, we put one on the front door and the others over the pictures on the wall. We had some 8 by 10's made and put those all over the parking signs outside his office. We put a box in every drawer in the desks he would be getting into. We also had a pillowcase made that looked like a juniormint box and had his sister put it on his bed when he wasn't home.

We had a t-shirt made too and put that around the back of his chair along with tons of green and white balloons tied around each chair in the room. We put a trail of juniormints from his parking space to the front door and then tons of them sprinkled on his porch at home too ... you get the idea. We thought it was hilarious and had a really fun time thinking of different things to do.

Brad's response to our antics ... Why couldn't I have given you a hard time about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or Snickers?????