What happens if you give lots of people from lots of different backgrounds a relatively pricy piece of Belgian chocolate?

I meet all kinds of people every week, the last two days I gave practically everybody I met a piece of chocolate.

Some say nothing, don’t thank you and just gobble it down right away. They don’t even smile.

One person wolfed it down and then had to say it was nothing special, didn’t thank me, didn’t smile and managed to insult me later on in the interaction (according to my wife this lady is attracted to me which translates as aggression towards me. I’m not taking this theory seriously because my wife’s head is my own personal paradise, in my wife’s head all women want to go out with me). This person was just plain rude and ungrateful. This is the only person that really bugged me and who will never ever get anything else from me.

Some people were very enthusiastic, genuinely grateful and curious.

A minority of people feels guilty and doesn’t want to accept it. To be honest it would have been a lot more fun if they had just accepted it.

Some people want to share it immediately.

When I did this same ‘experiment’ last year with about 100 teenage boys all of them were nice about it, and only one kid destroyed the chocolate, which I found to be the rudest reaction possible, but then again, he was in a bad mood, and the lady above is in her thirties and could be expected to be more jovial and diplomatic. I mean, the biggest children I teach are definitely not the youngest people I teach.

All in all I got an even bigger appreciation for people who are respectful and kind. I mean, what’s so frigging hard about it?

What I also learned is how I have this big need to give stuff to people, almost all the time.

I grew up in a very generous family, and I myself got an abundance of gifts growing up.

My wife, however, sees this giving as unneccessary, and she says don’t give people ‘presents’, give them your ‘presence’.