I can't eat chocolate so that means you can't either, right?

I’m allergic to chocolate; my roommate is not. Ever since I became allergic to chocolate, I managed to avoid chocolate by completely shutting it out of my life. Like trying to get over an ex-girlfriend, I removed every food or item in my house that possessed cocoa so that I would not think about how horrible it was to not eat chocolate. My family even went along with this idea and never brought chocolate into the house, or at least I didn’t think they did. My sister would hide bags of M&M’s in her room to snack on whenever I wasn’t around. For the most part, my family helped me to never have to be exposed to chocolate.

Before I left for college, I figured I might run into problems with the whole practice of removing chocolate from my environment. For most college students, chocolate is a staple food group that one builds into their diet, just like fruits or vegetables, and my roommate was no exception. I quickly had to get use to the fact that the shelves of my room would be filled with massive bags of M&M’s and boxes of chocolate chip cookies. At first, I was a little upset that I was constantly going to be spending so much time with a chocoholic, because I had no way to get my mind off of how crappy it was to not eat chocolate, but my roommate helped me discover an alternative to chocolate that wouldn’t send me into anaphylactic shock. Reeces pieces, resembling M&M’s in appearance, but completely composed of peanut butter, became my new staple food. Once we found out that I wasn’t going to die from eating Reeces pieces, my roommate went and bought me a massive bag of them; a true sign of a friend. My roommate knows that if I’m having a rough week or if I need to pig out on some snacks, he can always buy me a bag of Reeces pieces. A true friend is someone who knows exactly how to cheer up your day, one bag of candy at a time.