Eat one marshmallow right now.
Wait, and eat two marshmallows later.
Look away from the marshmallow, ashamed. Such things are not allowed. Hope you cannot be seen so near the marshmallow. Realize you are not only seen quite plainly, but watched. Hyperventilate. Strike the marshmallow off the table and onto the floor. Kick it away with your unworthy little shoe and scream for mercy, as though the marshmallow could forgive you, as though the marshmallow would forgive you if it could.
Sneak a nibble of the first marshmallow and rotate it to hide the bite mark so it looks as if you waited. Maybe you will get to have your marshmallow and eat it, too. That’s what you think that idiom means, at least. Or what it should mean. The bite mark is not very well hidden but you figure there is an even chance that the evaluator is as foolish as the evaluator thinks you are. At least you’re a fool who got a single bite of sweetness before everything inevitably went to rot. That’s how it goes. You know this lesson already. The smell of marshmallow makes you nauseous. You’re welling up with saliva and tears. You take a second bite and it’s even bigger and sloppier and there is no way you can hide it now. Your mouth is full of white sugar and yellow mucus. You can’t taste a thing.
Poke holes in the marshmallow, giving it a little face with little fingernail-sized mouth and eyes. Throw your voice to make it talk and give it a voice that sounds like a cruel impression of the evaluator. Insist that, technically, you didn’t eat it, after all. Demand to receive your second marshmallow. When the second marshmallow arrives, let it wait for you while you eat the first one, starting with its little face.
Refuse the first marshmallow outright. Get the second marshmallow and refuse it, too. There aren’t even graham crackers and chocolate, or cocoa. Is this some kind of a joke? It’s not very funny. The evaluator cannot leave until you do. Refuse to leave. Refuse to talk. Stoically, patiently watch both marshmallows get stale. Watch the evaluator shift weight from one leg to the other, trying to hide an increasingly urgent need to urinate. Who’s being tested now?
Conclude that there is a place where there are more marshmallows, and that there is someone or several someones who decide who is and is not worthy of less or more marshmallow distribution. But they have all of the marshmallows, all of the time. Who is testing them? No one, of course. You are not the subject of this test. You are its object. You are being morally and gastronomically exploited. Flip the table, and seize the means of marshmallow production.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash