Random Semi-Existentialist
Musings of a Very Tired Mind
You’re not supposed to have M&M’s in class. And I think I know why, too. I really didn’t before today, but as I sit here staring at the little brown bag hidden under my desk, I think I finally get it. M&M’s make you think – and not about vocabulary or sentence structure, either. Pretty strange things, if you ask me. For instance, I’m looking into the bag. I see brown, blue, green, yellow, red, and orange candies. All different colors, yet they all taste the same. And even though they taste the same, we prefer certain colors over others… which explains why they added blue and got rid of that nasty tan color a few years ago.
You could look at the colors in a lot of ways. You could say they’re there just because the M&M company felt like making their candy pretty. Or you could say that they’re there to fool the eater’s mind into thinking that they taste different, when anybody worth their chocolate knows that they all taste exactly the same. Or maybe you could switch your brain to AP English mode and say that the colors are symbolic of the things that make chocolate – and all other things – possible. Brown is the earth. Simple enough. Blue is the sky… or the rain… or the ocean… or the color of my shirt. Green is the grass. Red is… what is red? Red was the color of my teacher’s eyes last week when he saw that I was eating M&M’s. This is productive, for it gives me incentive to eat more M&M’s in his class and not let him catch me.
But orange… there’s the problem. Orange could be fire, but that doesn’t help much of anybody. Well, I decide, orange has to go. (What a funny word: orange. Say it a bunch of times, and it just completely loses its meaning.) I discreetly sift through the little brown bag, plucking out all the orange M&M’s and eating them. Then, suddenly… there are no more. No More Orange M&M’s. And my mind begins to wonder, were they ever really there in the first place? Do Orange M&M’s really exist? I’ve already decided that they’re not good for much of anything – so did my thoughts suddenly make them pop out of existence?
Or perhaps they’ve simply decided that they should no longer exist in my particular bag? Perhaps there’s another bag down in the cafeteria, waiting for me to buy it tomorrow, that’s just brimming with Evil Orange M&M’s waiting to get back at me, just because I ate all the Orange Ones first? That’s a frightening thought: what if you opened a bag of M&M’s and all the Orange Ones just attacked you….
I guess I would deserve it. But then, I’d have to get back at them too, which would ultimately result in my getting shipped off with the men in the white coats. Better, for now, just to think that they never existed. Even when I could see them… which makes me wonder if that little bag in my hand exists either. Well of course it does, because I can see it, right? Or maybe I can see it because I’m making myself see it because I’m so damn hungry. And if everything I saw in my mind really existed, then there would be about five million dollars in my pocket, a castle for me to go home to, and strange little green men poking my teacher to death with spoons. And lots more bags of M&M’s, of course.
Maybe something exists if everyone else can see it as well, I think to myself. To test this theory, I nonchalantly drop the little bag to my side, over by my right leg, still out of sight of the teacher. The little rustling noise gets the attention of the sophomore kid sitting next to me, and she says hopefully, "Can I have one?" With that, the teacher raises his eyebrow at her, she gives him a "What did I do?" look, and I act like I’m suddenly very excited about the conjugation of verbs. Once the teacher’s attention is turned away, I reply to her, "No, sorry. The Orange Ones are gone, and the rest are for me." After all, if one has already eaten all the Orange, one must balance one’s diet with a full selection of other colors as well. Even though they taste the same.
I think she understood, but I’m not sure. But whether or not she did is actually relatively unimportant in the Scheme of Things. And believe me, things certainly do Scheme… just like the Evil Orange M&M’s, which I am certain are plotting something against me. Maybe they’ll make me cease to exist. It wouldn’t be very nice, but I’m sure they could if they tried. I only wonder what would happen if I ate all the red ones as well… would they join the Orange and scheme against me too? Or would they cease to exist themselves? I suddenly realize that I never did figure that part out. I wonder what would happen if an Evil Orange M&M ate me. Would I cease to exist?
And do I exist now? Well, of course I do. If a person asks one for an M&M, then one must surely exist. And besides, someone once said, "I think, therefore I am." I’m thinking pretty hard right now, therefore I must be existing in an equally superlative sort of way at this particular moment. On the other hand, that proves my theory that the M&M’s don’t really exist, because they can’t think. On the other hand, if they’re plotting my downfall as I suspect they are, then they are thinking, therefore they do exist. And now at the risk of being accused of having two personalities, and thus four hands, I shall say on the other other hand, it’s only the Evil Orange Ones that are plotting, and who knows what the others are doing?
Of course, just when I’m on the brink of my Very Important Decision regarding the existence of myself and my M&M’s, the bell rings. So almost immediately, I stop thinking about the existence of M&M’s, orange or otherwise, and just shove the rest of the bag in my mouth. Whether or not they actually exist, they taste pretty good. Besides, would you really care about the existence of M&M’s if you had Skittles for your next class?
