My turn: Don't judge, just eat all the pink Starbursts

Few things in life are legitimately shocking enough to make one's jaw drop. Getting slapped is probably one of them. Watching someone get hit by a bus is probably another.

I hope everyone can count the number of times they've seen either of those things happen on just one hand, but most people have jaw-dropping reactions to a lot of things.

My most recent jaw-dropping moment came when a friend of mine told me he doesn't like cheesecake.

Dramatic, I know, but seriously, who doesn't like cheesecake? It's creamy AND crumbly. You can make it with any kind of fruit topping, chocolate, walnuts, cinnamon, caramel, peanut butter, marshmallow fluff or gummi bears - sort of like pancakes at IHOP.

Rejecting cheesecake of any kind should be a crime unless you have an allergy, and even then you should need a card for certifiable proof.

The jaw drop incident before that came when another friend told me her favorite Starbursts are the orange ones. If that's not enough, her second favorite was lemon.

No joke.

How can anyone love any color aside from the pink ones? I've always assumed the sweet, delicious strawberry Starbursts were the only reason anyone ever bought whole tubes to begin with. Opening the "Fun Size" two-packs to reveal two pink Starbursts on Halloween night is better than Christmas morning.

But not for my friend. I repeat: orange, then lemon.

I scraped my jaw off the floor long enough to have that trivial, subjective argument we all have with our friends about Starbursts at one point or another. It's one in a familiar series: Dark, milk or white chocolate? What's the best color Skittle? The best kind of Runt?

The answers to those questions are dark, a tie between red and green and banana, respectively, but that's neither here nor there.

Disagreements are met with disbelief if you're lucky, and disdain if you're not. Regardless, I was splitting some Halloween candy with a friend recently, when I finally realized how wrong we all are.

I noticed she was picking out all the Snickers and Mr. Goodbars, leaving me my beloved Milky Ways, 3 Musketeers and Twix. When I asked her about it, she said she had been picking them out and apologized before I could tell her what a favor she was doing me.

And that's when it hit me; my reaction to my friend's preference of Starburst shouldn't have been a question - "How can you like the orange and yellow ones!?" - but a statement: "We should eat Starbursts together."

Too often I surround myself with others who love banana Runts, dark chocolate and red Skittles. Why? Because they're normal. But ultimately, we have competing interests. Specifically, those interests include banana Runts, dark chocolate and red Skittles.

The answers to life become much clearer when you finally find the person who likes orange and yellow Starbursts, and I think I finally understand why we're not supposed to judge people. Instead of questioning their ways (or their inherently wrong preferences), we should embrace the difference and enjoy a package of Fun Size Laffy Taffy without having to eat the grape ones.

Better still, we should marry those people, ensuring that we never have to eat another grape Laffy Taffy again.

You might think no one wants to eat the grape ones, but someone does.

Who is that person? Your potential life partner, that's who.