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Cookie! Cookie! Cookie!

           Although we Schrams are pallid-skinned subterraneans and seldom emerge from our garden level retreat—OK, it’s a basement office with a big window overlooking a bird feeder—we respond to our subdivision’s monthly TGIF announcements like small-brained animals answering an inbred urge: “TGIF Friday, bring an hor-d’œuvre sufficient for six.”
We’re shallow. We don’t attend these gatherings social reasons; we show up because we’re sweetivores driven by gustatory lust. We feign just enough neighborliness to avoid expulsion and shunning. Yes, there we are, the ones saying, “Hi, good to see you,” with one eye reading nametags while the other eye scans the desserts. Shuffling closer to each month’s pinnacle of confectionery nirvana, we ask, “How are you?” “Dodge the flu this year?” “How was your vacation?” Using the skill of clandestine operatives, we surveil the options while monitoring body language and positional tactics. Only ruthless cunning will safeguard the seats offering optimal sight lines and angles of access. Timing will be key when the brownies and cheesecake slices begin disappearing.
We aren’t always sugar junkies. It’s mainly at TGIF that we become the human equivalent of polar bears, glutting ourselves on walrus-sized slabs of dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose, and zylose. At home, our cupboards and refrigerator weep in desolate emptiness: no cookies, no cake, no ice cream, no desserts. We dare not purchase such items. Our hunger is fundamental, a genetic flaw, an absence of self-control. None. Zero. Zip. But don’t blame us; we chose the wrong parents.
We carry a hereditary anomaly: aberrant, sugar-dependent fat cells. Once generated, they never die. Born as skinny, exposed-rib children, often mistaken for war refugees or famine victims, we succumbed long ago to 3CD (cookie-cataclysmic cell-disorder)—a metabolic plague inflicted upon calorie-burning, stick-figure kids—it’s what happens to those of us who can eat anything when young but suffer flubberitis as we age.
Our innocent mistakes as young children ripened into an unfortunate and injurious adult compulsion: we’ve never met a chocolate chip cookie we didn't like. How desperate is our need? We admit it. Our depravity goes way beyond monthly TGIFs! We attend the local hospital’s Dessert With The Doc lectures just for the cookies, enduring tedious presentations about diaper training, arthritic maladies, knee replacement, anaphylaxis, prostate care, and GI dysfunction. All for the cookies.
There is little we would not do for a cookie. If the Special Forces promised dessert, we would be on the first plane. If the Navy Seals offered cake, we’d enlist today. Our sugar hunger possesses no conscience. On weekends, we pay the Chinese restaurant’s higher rate to plunder the brownie bar. Why? We’re safe there. No dietary police chide us for dessert misbehavior; no nutritional authority waggles a disapproving finger when we substitute soup bowls for dainty dessert dishes. It’s a dessert bar Wild West.
So, there is our sordid admission. But don’t feel so holy. Through the miracle of the internet, I can see into your kitchen right now. Move away from the cookies! J

© Richard Schram, 2018

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