A Battle Royal

I used to be a choir nerd. {I still am, come to think of it.} Every spring, musical production season would roll forth at my high school and my friends and I found ourselves building sets, painting the stage, and tacking muslin after class. Snacks were of huge importance, and I was only too ready to ditch my usual healthy habits when I encountered a certain treat. I regularly filched my friend Amber's frosted circus cookies ~ especially the pinkly sprinkly ones. Even now when I bite into one of those saccharine-sweet, waxy, crispy little confections, I'm overcome with nostalgia. The pink ones taste the best.

So when word came out a few months ago that the Mother's Cookie company was closing its doors, I went straightaway to Target and bought up most of their circus animal cookies. {Shameful, I know.} Stowing six of those crinkly pink bags in the pantry, I felt like Gollum with his Precious. A little animalistic sliver of me wanted to sit there in the dark, gutting each bag and gulping down the contents. Rocking back and forth with sugar-laden glee. Passed out with sprinkles all over my face. Shooting them through my veins, if necessary. Fortunately for my waist, good sense and a tendency toward delayed gratification won out. My plan of action was to open a single bag and slowly, over the course of a month or two, ration it out and munch through the nostalgic glee of those cookies one at a time, savoring each morsel. A year's supply of snackies...mmmm.

And then I made a disconcerting discovery.

My stash dwindled. I thought maybe I got overzealous with the first bag and vowed to make the second one s-t-r-e-t-c-h. But that one evaporated, too. Somebody in this house was eating MY cookies, and I had a hunch it wasn't Sallie-Cat. With all the other lovely, refined, decadent indulgences out there ~ things like creme brulee and silky buttercream and dainty baked goods and the dang three (!) boxes of Thin Mints I bought just for him ~ Hubby Love decided he preferred circus animal cookies. And they were disappearing at an alarming rate. Every time I asked him to pop into the pantry for a can of chicken broth, munchity munch. Each day that he got home from work early and felt a little peckish, noshity nosh.

I swallowed my first impulse {the one demanding that I freak out and go all cookie-postal} and made a casual comment along the lines of,

"Baby, I didn't know you liked those cookies so much. They're kind of dry. How 'bout some of your Thin Mints instead?"
{Accompanied by persuasive hip swinging and a sassy cocked eyebrow. Yes, I AM addicted enough to use feminine wiles in an attempt to save my treats.}

And then I learned the heartbreaking truth that Hubby also has a childhood yen for Mother's frosted cookies. How to reconcile that important detail with the fact I don't share treats? Or that, even more importantly, these particular beloved treats were on the brink of extinction?! I was a desperate junkie, being cut off from my supply. My head went all hazy for a minute and there was an internal monologue, something along the lines of "The nasty husbandses has our Precious!"

Ultimately, I summoned a colossal inner strength of character and shoved Cookie-Gollum off the mental loudspeaker. I truly crave my husband's love and respect, and I couldn't have him see me reduced to a light felony over sugar, now could I?!? I silently, sacredly revisited my vows and knew that my marriage won out over cheap baked goods. I would grudgingly share the blasted cookies.

And then the day came that Hubby opened the last bag and started to whittle away. I broke a cold sweat, knowing the end was near.

When the bag was about half empty, I finally snapped. Weeks of pent-up snack food anxiety breached the dam.

"Okay. I've shared with you. Sacrificed for better or for worse, through thick and through thin, with sprinkles and without...but I need to say something for the record. I want the last cookie. No, not want...NEED. And it has to be pink."

Always loving a good joke, Hubby looked up with a grin that melted off his face like I'd just put a freeze on marital snuggling. He saw that I wasn't kidding, I wasn't entirely in control, and I was a woman posessed by cookie lust and impending withdrawal. {Oh, the shame!} If only you knew how serious a matter it really is.

So the days passed, the cookie supply continued to diminish, and my vow to consume the last morsel hung over that pink and white foil bag. One afternoon my mister received a mysterious box in the mail. After some secretive scuffling and sneaky maneuvers, he coaxed me downstairs to reveal something momentous. Lo and behold, our gargantuan upright freezer proudly displayed a shelf--a whole shelf--of crinkly pink and white bags.

In awe, I turned to him.

"Where? How? Did you hold someone at gunpoint to get those?"

He grinned, hands in pockets.

"Ebay."

Only after he consumed the last cookie from my Target batch that day {bold move!} did he confess to being a terribly conflicted man. You see, the best way to get Hubby Love to do something is to forbid it. Not that he was ever a bad kid or a pusher of the proverbial envelope, he just hates being bossed. In that regard, we are a matched set. So to have an edict hanging over the last cookie transformed it into a magical morsel like those in Alice's wonderland: a sweet practically tattooed with the invitation "Eat Me".

Image from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland"

There was just one small detail:

"I thought you might be kidding, but then I was just a bit scared of you with the whole last cookie thing. I really, reeeeeally wanted to go finish them off. Every last one."

I wonder what could possibly have stopped him? {Insert innocent batting of eyes.} I guess being a woman on the verge of cookie meltdown has just a little bit of heft to it. Luckily for all concerned, our burglars didn't find the freezer's treasure trove, or this post might be brought to you by way of the Big House.

Oh, and sweetie: I'm still setting my sights on that last pink cookie.