The M&M's have the Cheese Touch

At the request of Ben's kindergarten teacher I started Ben practicing his handwriting every week day after school.  And since Ben has to do it I make Tom do it too.  (This is a direct result of having 2 kids so close in age.  If one of them does something, the other one has to do it too.  There are very few exceptions to this rule.)  This has actually really improved both of their abilities in handwriting.  Anyway, back to the Cheese Touch.  After we do handwriting practice we do reading time.  Ben and Tom both read their readers to me and I read a book of their choosing to them.  Lately for Ben we've been reading "Diary of a Whimpy Kid".  They're really funny books.  In the first book the main kid, Greg, tells about a slice of cheese that gets stuck to the asphalt at his school and has been there for months, and if you touch the cheese then you've got the cheese touch, which can then be passed along to another person by touching them.  It's akin to cooties.
Tuesday night our neighbor Viv, aka "the best neighbor in the world", brought over a present from their recent trip to Las Vegas.  It was a clear box separated into 18 different sections with 18 different colors of M&M's.  As soon as I saw it I knew this lovely box of M&M's would have a very important job in our home: Handwriting Motivation.  Every time the boys finish a line of handwriting I let them choose one M&M from the box.  So far it's been a real hit.  The novelty of all the different specialty colors is going real strong.
Today Tom was selecting his last M&M after finishing his handwriting.  Then he comes running into the room telling me, "Mom Eliza has the M&M's".  Eliza dumped all the M&M's out onto the carpet in the living room.  Of course I over reacted and started yelling, "Tom why did you let her have the box".  He responded by hysterically screaming and crying.  (Tom has an unbelievably hard time communicating in stressful situations.  He clams up and immediately starts screaming and crying.)  Tom left and went into his room, leaving me looking at a massive pile of M&M's in a jumbled mess.  As soon as Eliza saw those M&M's she wanted to eat all of them.  She made off with a handful before I could stop her.  I momentarily thought, I should just throw all of these into a Ziploc and not worry about sorting them into their 18 different colors.  But then I immediately realized, putting them in a Ziploc would take away from their novelty, thus taking away from the motivating characteristics of 18 different colors of M&M's to choose from.
Ben ran up to the living and started helping me sort them into the box.  I was laughing in my mind when I told Ben, "Ben, make sure you don't get any of the nasty stuff from the carpet, ie. hairs, bits of ground of fishy crackers, melting salt from the front steps, in the M&M case with the M&M's."  Then Eliza wanted to help put back the handful she had previously grabbed.  Ben said to her, "Eliza, you can't put those in here.  You've got the Cheese Touch and now those M&M's have it too."  I started laughing.  He's so funny.
So, if my children offer you an M&M you may want to think twice.