Tossing My Cookies

I was out drinking with a couple of my buddies.  We had had a few drinks.  O.K., maybe it was a few more than a few.  Nobody was keeping score.  Anyway, the bartender came over and asked us to please keep it down.  I told him I was trying as hard as I could, but it would be a lot easier if he bought some decent booze.1

   “The noise, wise guy,”  he said, “hold down the noise.”2

   “Noise?  Noise!”  I shouted,  “It’s so noisy in here, I have to shout just to hear myself think!”3

   Well, I found out how bouncers got their name.  Yow!  That guy was big.  Tommy offered to give me a lift home.  Actually, his exact words were, “You’re so drunk, I wouldn’t let you drive home even if you could find your car.”  When we got to my house, he unlatched the car door and shoved me out.  I dropped like a heap of dirty clothes on the curb.  I tried to stand, then thought better of it.  After the ground stopped spinning, I crawled to the front door.  I started searching for my keys.  Then I remembered that I kept the front door unlocked in case of emergencies just like this.  I cracked the door open and poured myself in.4

   After a few minutes, I got brave, stood up and stumbled into the kitchen.  That’s when it hit me.  It started with a deep rumble.  My body began to shake.  I tried to fight it.  I started sweating.  I couldn’t hold it back.  It was so powerful.  I couldn’t stop it.  It was inevitable, I just had to do it.  If I didn’t, I would burst.  I absolutely had to do it.  I had to….. had to….. BAKE COOKIES!5

   Yes, bake cookies.  It was one o’clock in the morning.  I wasn’t crazy.  When the urge hits, nothing else will do.  The craving for fresh baked cookies is an insatiable monster.  Nothing else will subdue the beast.  And this was no ordinary craving.  It was a chocolate chip cookie monster gnawing at my bones.  I had to bake cookies!6

   I started searching for ingredients.  I didn’t need a recipe.  I had no use for recipes.  I’d done it enough times to get by on memory alone.  The first ingredient was flour.  Where’s the….. OH GREAT!  There was less than one cup of flour left.  I needed more flour.  I had to think………what looked like flour?  Baking powder!  Good.  I mixed it with the flour.  There still wasn’t enough.  What else looked like flour?  …..Cornstarch!  I dumped the whole box in.  I wanted to make the cookies extra creamy, but I didn’t have any cream.  Milk!  I pulled the jug of milk out of the fridge and opened it.  I immediately realized it would make my cookies lumpy rather than creamy.  I quickly replaced the cap and put the milk on the counter.  I would deal with it while the cookies were baking.  After rummaging around in the fridge, I found an open can of evaporated milk on the bottom shelf.  I wondered how long it had been in there.  I pulled the can out.  It was empty.  It must have…. evaporated.  Then I remembered the non-dairy coffee creamer.  Yeah, that would work.7

   Next came the magic ingredient, the chocolate chips.  I dug through my cupboards.  Where were they?  NO!  No, don’t tell me they’re gone.  I had to have chocolate chips.  I started pulling stuff off the shelves like a madman.  There had to be chocolate chips in there somewhere.  Way in the back of the last shelf, I was rewarded.  One bag, already open, less than half full.  I smiled and took them down.8

   I wondered how long they had been up there and looked at the freshness date.  The first digit of the year was faded and worn.  The second digit was a seven.  Only two years old.  They were fine; or they could be twelve years old.  It was hard to tell.  No, they couldn’t be that old.  When was the last time that I cleaned the cupboard?  Hmmm….. well, O.K., theoretically they could be twelve years old, but it was unlikely that I could have left chocolate chips uneaten for that long.  Besides, I read someplace that they found chocolate in the burial chamber of a pyramid and it was still edible.  I think it was chocolate.  Anyway, they will taste fine once they melt into the creamy batter.9

   As I mixed the chips into the flour, I realized that there weren’t very many.  I needed a lot.  I wanted to make cookies like the ones that, certified accountants verify, have one hundred chips per cookie.  That’s what I wanted.  That’s what I needed!  More chocolate…. I needed more chocolate.  The wheels of thought turned slowly.  The closet!  I dug under several shoes, a scarf and a boot.  Aha!  There it was, a bag of old Halloween and Easter candy.  I wondered how old it…. who cares!  It was chocolate.  I dug out the brown nuggets and broke them into small hunks resembling chips (some were reluctant).  I mixed them into the cookie dough, then added the remaining ingredients and stirred it.  Man, it was thick!10

   I pulled out my sheet pan and prepared to plop down my cookies.  Then I had an idea.  Why make a bunch of little cookies when I could make a couple of huge ones?  I divided the batter and made two macho-humongo cookies.  Oh, man they looked good.  I preheated the oven to 350, no 450 degrees instead.  They’d get done sooner that way.  I popped them into the oven and flipped on the light so I could watch them through the smoked glass window in the oven door.11

   I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at my cookies eagerly.  It shouldn’t take long.  They had already begun to rise.  The long night was catching up with me.  I cradled my head in my hands.  My head had turned into a cuckoo clock.  There was ticking and gears grinding inside and a pendulum was swinging in there somewhere.  Those little pine cone weights were attached to my eyelids and slowly pulled them down.  I had to rest my eyes, but just…for….a…..minute……12

   WHAT?….OH JEEZ!….WHO?….WHAT!!  An insane screeching sound had pierced my ears and ripped through my weary brain.  I sprang out of my chair like crisp toast.  My eyes were burning.  Smoke!  That screaming banshee was the smoke detector.  Smoke?  MY COOKIES!!  I turned off the oven while the banshee continued to shred my eardrums.  I jumped up to shut off the alarm, but I couldn’t reach it.  Why do they put those things so darned high?  I couldn’t stand the noise any longer and grabbed the nearest thing I could wrap my fingers around.  I hurled it at the smoke detector with all my might.  It was a direct hit.  The cover shattered and the detector fell to the floor.  It moaned once and died.  I ran over and stomped on it, just to be sure.  The projectile turned out to be the stopper of the lead crystal decanter my Aunt Lucy gave me for Christmas three years ago.  I finally found a use for the stupid thing.13

   The thick gray smoke was eroding my eyeballs.  I opened a window and turned on the vent.  As the smoke dissipated, a scene of carnage slowly appeared.  All the cupboard doors were open.  The shelves were half empty.  There were boxes and cans of food strewn across the floor.  What had happened?  My mind was fried.  The only thing I remembered was…MY COOKIES!!  OH NO!  I grabbed a towel and pulled them out of the oven.  My poor cookies, my precious chocolate chip cookies, they were….they were done.  They were deceased.  They died and went to Cookie Heaven.  I looked at their pitiful, burnt remains and observed a moment of silence.  14

   I picked up one of the cookies and examined it closely.  It was extremely light (it would have been fluffy, not stuffy), very smooth and incredibly hard.  I knocked on it with my knuckles.  It sounded like fiberglass.  I wasn’t really sure what fiberglass sounded like, but I bet it would sound like my cookie.15

   I had to throw out my cookies.  What a shame.  What a colossal waste of chocolate.  Even if it was old, hey, it was chocolate!  I looked across the room at the waste can.  I couldn’t resist the temptation.  I held the cookie like a Frisbee, took aim and let it fly.  It sailed smoothly through the air.  My aim was slightly off.  It hit the wall, ricocheted over to the fridge, bounced off the fridge and landed in the waste can.  That was cool!  I went over to the can, pulled out my cookie and looked at it.  It hadn’t chipped or cracked.  Not even a crumb had come off.16

   I decided to break it open and look inside.  Maybe the inside wasn’t burnt.  I set the cookie on the table and grabbed my crystal decanter.  It wasn’t any good without the stopper, right?  I raised it over my head and whacked the cookie.  It shattered into a thousand pieces; the decanter, not the cookie.  The cookie was unscratched.  I decided not to open the cookie.17

   My cookies were indestructible.  They wouldn’t break.  They were obviously impervious to heat and I later found out that they were water resistant and could float.  They were amazing cookies.  Each day I found new uses for them.  I used them as pot holders, cutting boards and coasters.  They also made a great home plate for baseball.  The best thing, I found to do, was throwing them.  They’re so aerodynamic and light.  They fly twice as far as Frisbees.  Whenever Tommy comes over, we grab a six pack, go out in the field and have a great time tossing our cookies.18

   They say some of the greatest discoveries are stumbled upon by accident.  I could make a fortune marketing my cookies.  I thought of all the possibilities.  The cookie dough could be baked into different sizes and shapes.  Life preservers, heat insulation, maybe even bullet proof vests could be made.  High impact car bumpers, boats, heck, even entire airplanes could be manufactured from my chocolate chip cookie dough.  But there was a problem, a horrible problem.  I couldn’t remember the ingredients.  Everything from that night was a blur.  I tried to make more, but all I got was a burnt mess.  I’m going to keep trying, but I’m afraid I’ll never be able to reproduce those wonderful cookies.  If only I had written down the recipe!19