GIMME YER CHALK

Besides grapefruit juice, I haven't had much in the way of cravings during this pregnancy, and I'm always wanting grapefruit juice anyway, so it doesn't really count. Wait, I take that back--I have had cravings! For all the hairs on my chin to turn to gold so I can cash in on the prickly little motherfruitcakers. And for a 1974 Chevy Nova painted eggplant with a sick stereo and furry black seatcovers. But that isn't a new craving either, so it doesn't count either.

Yello, Isabob, ain'tcha fergettin' somethin'?

Oh yes, that chalk dealio. Pica. That phenomenon where people want to eat odd things, like paper towels and poop. I do have a bit of that going on--not with poop, not with paper towels, but with scrumptious delightful white chalky crunchy powdery CHALK!

CHALK!!! I JUST WANT TO EAT CHALK!!!

All day long, I fantasize about eating chalk: starting with a nice new box of it, holding the box, smelling its cardboard-y chalky smell. Thinking about the slender white chalksticks waiting inside. Imagining the first bite, the powdery chalk dust mixing with my saliva and sliding down my throat in a grainy rivulet. Opening the top of the box. Looking at the chalksticks, lined up all nice and neat in rows, their little heads flat and hard and just screaming for a chip to be bitten off. Turning the box upside down and letting one of the chalksticks slide gently into my hand. Rolling it between my fingers, its perfect smoothness and fragility begging me to break it with a satisfying SNAP! Holding the chalkstick up to my nose, inhaling its subtle distinctive smell. Putting one end in my mouth, where it begins to dissolve, tasting acrid and bland. Taking the narrow round end between my teeth and biting down, tentatively at first and then hard, deliberately, crunching the broken pieces, chewing and mashing them with my jaws and then swallowing them in an unapolagetic frenzy of powdery chalk-eating FUN!

I almost bought some chalk at the store before heading home from work, thinking I'd nibble some in the car and then, if it felt right, scarf the rest in the dark garage this evening. However, it crossed my mind that standard store-bought chalk is probably not raised organically or sustainably, and the thought of eating non-free-range chalksticks who had to spend their entire short miserable lives in cages just didn't sit well with me. I'm ethical, you know, and want even my chalk to radiate a happiness born of grass clippings and mud puddles, of breezy pastures and the sound of far-off farm dogs barking and cows lowing...

If I can't find any organic chalk, maybe I'll just settle for poop. We have plenty of it in the front gravel patch--it's all artisanal, and some is quite fresh.