Fred sauntered into Mink looking like a man who’d just had sixty minutes of Shiatsu and was too relaxed to shower afterwards. He called me out from behind the bar and tried to give me a complicated handshake that I’m either too old or too white to comprehend.
“You’ve lost your hipness”, he said, berating me in that playful tone one can when one’s been friends over three decades. “You’re slippery”, I shot back, “and I’m not referring to your methodology”.
“I’ve been walking all over downtown. You should try it sometime. Or maybe you’re just sympathetically pregnant”.
It’s now public fact that Mrs. Mink is expecting in the spring. Still, that jab hit above the belt, so to speak.
I offer him a cappuccino, which I suspect is the sole reason for his having hoofed it from Yaletown. We could have easily talked or texted to catch up.
“Remember Danny Kaide, from high school?” he asks me. “I saw him at an opening last night. He told me no one in his family has lived past 61. I said we should have dinner soon”.
As disturbing as it is to hear that from a man sweating profusely in a chocolate shop, I laugh. “Thanks for the update”, I say. “What else is going on?”
He tells me his daughter is turning eight, and he’s planning her birthday party. All she wants is an afternoon limo ride with a dozen of her closest friends. No bouncy castles, no Barbie impersonators, no magic tricks. Just some urban cruising. Because Fred walks everywhere, I sense she’s feeling auto-deprived, and like her Dad, she’s a go big or go home kind of kid.
He asks me for loot bags, figuring that’s the missing element to making this party a success and I’m happy to oblige. The logistics are simple. I’ll make twelve bags with black and white chocolate cow lollipops, ladybug and dinosaur truffles and milk chocolate cell phones, gender neutral because he doesn’t have a girl/boy headcount, and he’ll pick them up the day before.
Now any parent who’s ever thrown a modern day birthday party for their kids, or at least picked their kids up from a birthday party, knows the loot bags are given out at the end, to take home. Fred made the cardinal mistake of giving them out as they piled into the car. Lots of kids, lots of chocolate, confined space, and stop and go city traffic, equals motion sickness.
Twenty minutes into a two hour tour and the limo driver calls Fred and tells him he’s bringing the kids back, and is expecting help dealing with the barf fest. Fred’s out walking, so the car has to swing by and pick him up first.
I’m laughing, yet I’m disturbed, and it makes me want to take a shower just thinking about it.
Marc Lieberman
Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.
Call the store: 604.633.2451
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In Person: 863 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9
Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
