2009-07-27
Something in my constitution seems to earn me the distain of cookie makers. It has been this way for centuries, for lifetimes, or more accurately, it has been like this twice in my 30 year lifetime.
In my first year of schooling funded by the American taxpayer (kindergarden) I was often on the playground. One day I was approached by an older gal in a shiny pastel satin baseball jacket of the variety popular in the mid-80s. I remember her jacket more than her face, for it was lovely. She, on the other hand, questioned me about my family, ascertaining based on my looks (we did look alike, it was true, and there were boys and girls, and she asked these questions first and I said, “yes, yes,” because I was a young and honest) that my whole family of siblings and I had robbed her mother’s cookie shop.
It sounded like quite a coup! And we all enjoyed cookies, it was true, but to my knowledge we had never pulled off a cookie caper of any caliber. To my knowledge, our only cookie consumption took place after Sunday school during what the Presbyterian church called “coffee hour.” Ah, coffee hour, land of oreos and sugar highs. Still, the girl in the satin baseball jacket harassed me for many weeks after that, accusing me of the cookie theft, and while I knew in my heart that I was innocent there was something in her powerful insistence that made me feel guilty. So the playground began to feel like a police lineup, and I was the only freckled cookie thief identified by the cookie police.
Let’s move ahead some 24 years or so, and we find me, your narrator, a grown lady who still has freckles and siblings, a lady who still gets falsely accused of things, perhaps every ten years or so. I have the pleasure of being part of a strange extended family who shall remain un-named. These folks have many sparkling qualities—they enjoy good food and sunshine, they have a penchant for honesty and no tolerance for bullshit, and they have basically served as a nice place for this lady to hang her hat since, oh, round about 1997. (Thanks love! Thanks seafood! Thanks drunks of Milford!) I know this family, I know them perhaps too well! Their worst quality is that they love to gossip with each other about the shenanigans they create. There was the engagement ring fiasco, there was the ex-wife in the American brew pub fiasco, and there was the rolex thievery fiasco. These events are like weather, we expect them, they sometimes involve me, and most times they thankfully do not. I had been enjoying life on the sidelines, to use a football term. This is a family who enjoys football. Lest I forget, my late father enjoyed football as well.
Into the mix of this family within, oh the last year or two, enters the heir to a cookie fortune. In keeping with my allusion and shadow play, he shall remain unnamed. But this is a small state, and there are only so many American cookie companies. I think you can put it together. I had enjoyed using this gentleman as an anecdote that amused me—my fiancee’s cousin is dating the heir to a cookie fortune! How illustrious! How much more delicious than the heir to an insurance company, or the heir to a corn products distillery! Perhaps the zest with which I laughingly used the gent as an anecdote has come back to bite me in the ass. Perhaps I should not have amusedly told by BFF that he likes to go golfing with Rush. And not the band, no, the terrible talk radio jerk. I joked about how few degrees of separation there were between us & Limbaugh. And maybe at this point in the conversation, the universe decided to teach me a lesson.
Some weeks back, in the height of strawberry season, I accompanied by brother and a lady friend on a mission to pick berries. When I returned home, Jon & I settled in for the evening and Jon made sloppy joes whilst I prepared berry topping for a fresh strawberry pie. Our kitchen area being limited, and our interest in tidiness post-picking & grocery shopping being lacking, the area around us was a bit disorganized. As is our way, there were piles of recycling next to the couch and pots on the deck that remain to be transplanted. On the porch were tables in and chairs in disrepair, plants in need of water, and other life-like accoutrements of people who don’t always clean stuff up.
In the midst of this, who should knock on our door and waltz in but Jon’s cousin and the heir to the cookie fortune. They did not knock the door and wait for someone to answer it. No, no, they knocked on the door and walked in. This dynamic duo looked around, admired our apartment, chatted amiably about our preparations for dinner, and departed. In the brief time they were in our apartment, the cookie heir even suggested that he missed the pedestrian charms of sloppy joes and perhaps, sometime soon, Jon & he could get together and enjoy one together. The condescension in his tone was utterly lost on us, indeed we said goodbye to the happy couple and settled down to dinner and went about our lives.
Flash forward a month, and in the morning, on our way to some weekend activity, Jon returned from a visit to his father with what he deems “BAD NEWS.” I am concerned it might have something to do with the world economy, or his grandfather’s health, or lord knows what. And Jon says, “(The heir to the cookie fortune) says we live like slobs.” And better yet, the cookie tzar did not subtly mention this to one of the family members only to have the rumor trickle through the family ecosystems well-established gossip channels. No, no, the cookie heir deigned to use us as an anecdote about slovenly living while chowing down with the extended family.
Ah, the use of him as an anecdote has bitten the anecdoter (me) in the ass indeed! The finest part of it all is that the cookie heir managed to upset the extended relations because while it would be fine for one of them to call us slobs, well, he barely knows us!
I experienced a range of emotions in light of this revelation. They included anger and dismay, but I tried to connect myself to the universe, and keep it in perspective. Probably the gent never had to pick up a plate for himself, and so has no idea what it is to live in a homestead without hired help. Indeed, he has a private jet, so he cannot be expected to understand the pleasures of a sloppy joe!
My lover was not upset that he called us slobs, for on that day, as on most, our house was not spotless and an entire couch was engulfed with electronics cabling, cds, boxed gear, and LPs. My lover was upset because he had honestly believed that the cookie heir wanted to eat sloppy joes with him, he had failed to pick up on the subtle cut that Jon said, “I can usually spot a mile away! That jerk! Insulting my sloppy joes!”
I touched my stomach with anger as well, as I had, in the past week, spent damn near $5 on small packs of the cookies made famous by his grandmother’s skill in the kitchen some 50 years earlier. I had betrayed myself by supporting this cookie tzar. I would henceforth never eat another of these delicious morsels! I would not support the catty man who golfs with Limbaugh and silently judges us! And yet it dawned on me that his family had sold to a food conglomerate in the 80s or 90s, and now just supported itself on its stock interest in the conglomerate. A cookie boycott would not impact his bottom line.
Looking around my house, I have to say the cookie heir isn’t entirely wrong about our housekeeping skills. Around here, we care about making stuff in our home, and making stuff from scratch is messy! And sometimes smells like hot strawberry goo and cooked beef. Surely the heir to the cookie fortune has not forgotten what it means to make a cookie from scratch and subsequently lack the energy to clean the pan? Does he have too many people cleaning up after him to remember this?
Oh, cookie heir, I will try to stop using you as an anecdote, but I fear I will never clean my windows or make you a steak. Around here, we only share our strawberry pie and sloppy joes with people who aren’t silently judging us.