Making the Perfect Skor Bar, a Journey of Facing Childhood Memories.

A while back my mother-in-law gave me her recipe for the Skor bars that she makes from time to time, which are TO-DIE-FOR. They are that perfect combination of ingredients which makes a treat "just right". Needless to say the first time I made these I was very excited at the prospect of making my own favorite treat. I soon realized however that the recipe I was given did not include any specifics or nuances which, as I was to find out, were actually quite important to know and consider.

Mistakes were made and many of them, granted, were mostly due to my own limited knowledge about the ingredients that I was working with. Her Skor bars were always perfectly covered with a smooth layer of butterscotch and white and dark chocolate. You would think the idea here is pretty straightforward, to just sprinkle some chocolate and butterscotch on top, put it in the oven to melt and blend with a spatula. That didn't happen for me. The first time I tried to make the Skor bars, the white chocolate didn't want to melt and the second time it was the butterscotch that maintained their droplet shape and refused to be smoothed over.

"Lesson learned", I thought to myself both times as I tried to figure out how to do it better next time and hopefully be able to make the Skor bars the way I want them. But as I was thinking of how to solve the butterscotch issue, I realized an interesting thing. All of these "mistakes" could have been prevented if I had just asked my mother-in-law for the specifics in the first place. I could have asked her to tell me which brand and type of ingredients she uses and how big the oven dish is that she uses for it, since that was also something I had to figure out by trial and error. So I asked myself, "Why didn't I just ask her?", "Why do I keep putting myself through this process of assuming how things work and then finding out later that I was wrong, rather than asking the person who can tell me for certain?"

I realized that I didn't ask her because when I thought about asking her, there were thoughts in the back of my mind coming up saying "She might think I'm stupid if I ask her", and "I might annoy her with my questions." This was the first time I really looked at this reasoning which I realized has often stopped me from asking important questions. So many times throughout my life have I chosen to create assumptions of how to do things rather than just ask someone because I was afraid of being seen as stupid and/or annoying, and in many of these situations I ended up making mistakes because of exactly this reason.

To a degree I have over the years learned to get over those fears, especially in work-situations where I needed to make sure I did things correctly. However I realized it was clearly still influencing how I do things, just in more "subtle" ways. And I don't need to look far to find out where I learned to suppress myself in fear of being called stupid or reacted to with annoyance. Memories come up of my time in elementary school, when so often a teacher would get annoyed at me or some other student not understanding something and asking more questions than the teacher felt like answering. I am sure the word "stupid" was used plenty as well. I may have suppressed many of those memories, but I do still remember experiencing quite intense shame, humiliation and inferiority during those times.

Please understand though, I am in no way trying to place blame on those teachers. It is very challenging and difficult raising a child as it is, so I can imagine that trying to maintain a sense of order and structure in a classroom of about 30 kids can trigger quite some emotional reactions. This also doesn't mean that I justify calling a kid stupid or teachers taking their frustrations out on the students. Rather than expecting the teacher to be near perfect, I would like to see a change in the system which doesn't even give them half a chance to give each child the attention and care it deserves.

As for myself, it is to recognize that those memories don't need to decide or determine how I experience myself or how I approach situations. It is to understand that the fear of feeling stupid and annoying people is based on childhood experiences which were mostly the result of a dysfunctional education system and are thus not relevant to who I am here and now. We have all been through more or less the same childhood trauma, so if anything it is up to me to live as the example and do what I know is most supportive and best for myself rather than allowing fear to direct my actions.

As soon as I've submitted this post I will ask my mother-in-law about the specifics of how to make Skor bars the way she makes them so I can finally stop making unnecessary mistakes and will no longer taste disappointment when eating my self-made Skor bars lol

Thanks for reading!

Kim Amourette