5th Avenue Candy Bar

        This month’s non-food of choice is the 5th Avenue candy bar. Though you’ve undoubtedly seen it sitting on the shelf at the checkout, you’ve most likely passed it over for the more familiar Snickers, or the eye-pleasing Butterfinger. However, the last girl chosen to dance with on prom night is still a girl, so this candy bar deserves its fair turn around the dance floor as well. It has been rumored to be named after either the glamorous 5th Avenue in New York, or the street in Reading, Pennsylvania that creator William Luden (of Luden Cough Drops fame) started his business on in the 1930s. The wrapper is plain brown, bespeaking of the average brown chocolate inside.

At first it tastes like a Butterfinger, but with the proportions all wrong. The average chocolate is thicker, and the faux peanuty crunch inside is compacted, making dislodging it from your teeth nearly impossible.

Life is full of choices. Small town or big city? The familiar candy or the new adventure? There may be a reason why you've never heard of Reading, Pennsylvania. Why you reach for the Butterfinger over the 5th Avenue. The 5th Avenue is not high on my list, but it serves its purpose: it presents you with a choice.

Ingredients can only take you so far in life. Sooner or later, you have to admit to yourself that the rush of pure sentiment can override your otherwise logical brain in its entirety, making a truly average candy bar, or a truly unremarkable town, unforgettable.