Cinnamon Flavored Death

Cinnamon Flavored Death. No that is not the name of some gritty 1970's grind house movie. That is what I call anything cinnamon flavored that is not a pastry item. That covers your Red Hots, Hot Tamales, those terrible red "sprinkles" that people hide on Christmas cookies because they just want someone to ruin the holiday dinner with vomit, Big Red gum, and the rest. It's gross, it's unappetizing, and it is a mere facade of what candy is supposed to be. It is disappointment in its purest form.

I have a handful of very specific, very unique food aversions. We all know I hate when sweet foods are warm, I've never had a PB and J sandwich, and dark chocolate is Satan's aphrodisiac. What makes my distaste for non-dessert cinnamon flavored items interesting is that it was born not of natural causes, but of one night of bad decision making.

My senior year of college, when I was 21 (really, I'm not rounding up for this story), my best friend and I visited a mutual friend at another college. In proper host fashion, my best friend and I were offered extensive amounts of libations, including the dietary culprit in this situation: Goldschlager. If you are unfamiliar, Goldschlager is a cinnamon flavored schnapps with little gold bits floating around in it. Imbibing in enough of this potent potion makes you feel warm, cozy, and very very very...relaxed. After becoming increasingly "relaxed" my body decided to depart with my gold lined stomach contents. It was the first and only time that an alcoholic beverage has taken the initiative to remove itself, forcefully, from my insides. A few trips to the porcelain puke receptacle and I was doing alright. Unfortunately, to this day, I cannot tolerate the faintest scent of fake cinnamon flavoring. If someone pulls out a piece of Big Red gum during a meeting, and I am privy to its dominant scent properties, I have to force my tongue to the roof of my mouth in order to keep myself from making a scene and actually releasing my lunch all over the floor. Once I was leaving a sushi restaurant with my brother and went to grab a mint from the host podium. I was just crossing the threshold to the parking lot when I popped the mint in my mouth and was met with my scenes of my life flashing in front of my eyes. I spit out the after-dinner abomination and began to dry heave in the parking lot, like a true class act.

The only moderately pleasant thing about this whole experience is that fake cinnamon items tend to be dyed an equally unappealing red color, so they aren't particularly challenging to avoid. Tasty cinnamon flavored items (pies, rolls, cakes), that involve use of the actual spice, not its reject sibling, are brown...like cinnamon.

In summation, faux cinnamon is bad and if you enjoy it then you should feel bad you plebeian waste of space.