I'll Never Have a Career as a Chocolatier

It’s Probably For the Best

When I was young, as most young people do, I thought I had an unlimited amount of time to do whatever. Many of us are caught up in the present, but I knew I had plenty of time to get to the things I wanted to get to, eventually. Back then, I did not care about traveling the world to experience all the wondrous aspects of our big, beautiful planet. There would be lots of opportunities for that sometime down the road. Well, now that I’m ol . . . uh . . . not young anymore, I realize I do not have all the time in the world.

I have mentioned before how I am not all that interested in traveling nowadays. But, my wife does want to travel, and I cannot keep saying I don’t want to go. That would be very unfair to her.

So, more than a year ago when she first mentioned a Christmastime river cruise on the Rhine and Moselle rivers in Europe, ending with several days in Paris (you know, the one in France), I could see how much this meant to her and that I had to do this. However, we made a deal. She would make all the plans and I would not have to do anything. She would tell me when and where I had to be and all I had to do was show up. I wouldn’t have to think about it.

Obviously, it was a good deal for me. But, what did she get out of such an arrangement? Well, she received something very important. She got my promise not to second guess any of her decisions. No questioning, no snide remarks, no veiled criticisms, no eye-rolling, no nothing. Just show up on the designated date. From time to time, she would run something by me, an optional visit to a lovely, little town, for example. I would say, “Sounds fine. Whatever you want to do is okay by me. I’ll support your decision.” And, I meant it.

She worked on it for more than a year, with a travel agent (Who knew they still existed?), along with Viking Cruises and two friends of ours who were going, too. Finally, this past Christmas season, the time had come and off we went.

Flying into Zurich, Switzerland.

Four airports and three airplanes later, we were in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a brutal day and it was the kind of day that makes me want to not travel. Schlepping our bags of too much stuff over to the next hemisphere, across eight time zones, was not fun in any way, shape, or form. I may have made a few comments as to how difficult the day was, however, it was only in agreement with the comments we all were making. It was a bear of a day, but I did not question the travel schedule. It was very important that I honor our deal.

We spent a couple of days in a Zurich hotel, before the start of the river cruise. Zurich is located at the tip of a natural lake, which on the map, looks kind of like the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. We took a hour-long boat tour on this beautiful lake. The water was very clean and clear and provides pristine drinking water to the region. It was quite lovely.

For me, the most memorable thing about Zurich was a visit to the Lindt Home of Chocolate, where I flunked out of candy school. Perhaps I should explain. Viking arranged for an optional tour at Lindt, giving those who signed up, a hands-on opportunity to create and decorate a chocolate Lindt teddy bear. And we were to decorate some pre-made bon bons, as well, after a short period of instruction on how to do all this.

The Lindt teddy bear, wrapped in protective foil.

I got off on the wrong foot right away. They give you a big white chef’s hat, a white apron, and a white double breasted candy maker’s coat to wear. Our handler showed us the proper way to wear this stuff, but of course, I put mine on wrong. Our guy said it was okay, but I wanted to do it the right way, so I took the stuff off and got it right the second time.

The only known photo in existence of me in my chocolatier getup.

So, perhaps I was rattled by the uniform mishap, in addition to being a little nervous about our next task. They took us into a big, well-lit room that had many long tables set up for us to make our teddy bears. We each had our own work station and a two piece plastic form, and there were two big slow cookers on each table, one containing liquefied milk chocolate and the other containing liquified dark chocolate.

The object was to decorate the interior of the form with one of the liquid chocolates, in any artistic manner we chose. Most folks highlighted the bear’s ears, eyes and claws, and gave it a little tail, similar to the images on the protective foil of the finished product. We were to let that harden for a few minutes, then fill the form with a bit of the other chocolate, rotating it slowly with our hands in order to cover the sides of the form evenly. At the end of the process, we would then have a Lindt chocolate teddy bear with our own personal decorative touches. Sounds kind of cool, right?

Well . . .

It would have been cool if I had done it correctly. But, I didn’t.

Intellectually, I can look back on this and see I was able to experience the Lindt Home of Chocolate in a way that few people do. I should have seen it as the fun opportunity it was. Instead, in my mind, I set it up as a pass or fail test of my artistic abilities, along with a test of my general competence. Sometimes, even after living so long and having dealt with my anxieties off and on ever since I can remember, they can kind of get the best of me.

I decorated my bear form as best I could. Our trainer had prepared these little paper cone things filled with liquid dark or milk chocolate and we were to squeeze a tiny stream out of the cone’s bottom into the areas of the form we wanted to decorate. I accomplished this without incident. I knew my decorative flourishes weren’t very pleasing to the eye but, hey, it was all in fun, right?

This is my decorated form. I went for a minimalist approach. Little did I know how truly minimalist it would be.

I determined that I was ready for the next step, which was filling the form with the other chocolate. So, what did I do?

I filled the form with the same chocolate that I had just finished using to create my decorations!

Which meant my decorative flourishes were invisible. Oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe I had done such a stupid thing. The whole object of the exercise was to contrast the different chocolates, thereby creating a personally decorated Lindt teddy bear. But, I fucked up. Aaaarrrrggghh.

I know in the whole grand scheme of the universe, this episode was less than nothing. So, I screwed up, so what? I was terribly embarrassed, though. I embarrassed myself, but worse, I felt like I embarrassed my wife, too, and I really hated that. She would deny that she felt any embarrassment at all, of course. But, this is the way my mind works.

When we were finished rotating our forms, our trainer guy put them in a little refrigerator under the work table, so that they could harden quickly. While we waited, we decorated the premade bonbons.

My bonbons. Acceptably average,

The final humiliation came at the end. Our trainer guy removed the forms from the refrigerator and passed them out to us so we could extricate our creations and prepare them for packaging. When he got to my unicolor, decoration-free bear, he goes, “Ah, a classic look.” I think he was just trying to say something positive, but inside I was seething. Not at our trainer guy, though. I was really pissed at myself for screwing up the simplest of directions.

No grades were handed out, but there was no doubt who would have been designated as the dunce of the class.

My poor, unadorned Lindt teddy bear. I actually did decorate it, but this is how it came out.

So now that a few weeks have passed, are there any useful takeaways from this fiasco? Well, I like to believe I am capable of learning from past experiences, but dang, sometimes I wonder if that’s true. It’s hard to tell from this post, I guess, however, I believe I’ve gotten past this incident with a minimum of psychological damage. Really, all I did was commit a little goof-up, which was of no consequence, and my emotional response was a bit over the top, considering how minor it was. Apparently, I’ll never have a career as a chocolatier, but that’s okay. I’ll never be an astronaut, or a baseball player, or President of the United States, either.

I do know that expecting perfection from myself is a losing proposition, and that keeping everything in perspective should be the goal. We all need to give ourselves a break once in a while.

The beginning and ending point of my career as a chocolatier.

Postscript:

We spent two weeks in Europe over the Christmas holiday. And, a trip to Europe is a pretty big event in Normworld. Therefore, another vacation story or two may be on the horizon. You have been warned.

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