A Mission of Cookies and Humiliation

I miss my mom. But I do swan (and all of you should know by now that I abhor "swanning"), she used to put me through the ringer.

Once Covid reared its ugly head, my brother, myself and my mom thought it a good idea that she just stay in her apartment and we'd do all the running for her. She was just too dang vulnerable at that point, mask or no mask (and we had no vaccines then, either). 

Honestly, I didn't mind putting together a list of her grocery needs and fetching them. It was ten times speedier than taking her with me to do her grocery shopping. Talk about a huge chunk of time lost forever. Once, she and I spent twenty minutes in the butter aisle alone. 

"How much is this one?" she'd ask and point at a box.

I'd tell her. Invariably, she'd come back with one of two of her usual responses, either "Hmmph" or "highway robbery!" We would then proceed to go through all the rest of the butter boxes and prices. Then she'd forget what the prices were and we'd start all over again. Behind me, a line began to form of impatient butter shoppers.

Anyway, one day I went to her apartment, ready to jot down her grocery list.

"Is that all?" I asked.

"Wait," she replied. She got up, went into the kitchen and brought back a half-eaten package of cookies, one of those see-through plastic containers half-filled with gross looking marshmallow cookies with an ugly aqua-colored frosting. She thrust the package at me. "Take these and get my money back."

I blinked. Stared at the proffered burden she held out to me. "Ummmm...what?"

"Take them back. They're awful."

"Mom...you ate half of them. I can't take them back!"

"I know what I know and I know that they're bad." (This was one of her favorite sayings and usually it signified that she wouldn't tolerate any fools and the argument was done because she knows what she knows.)

"But...but...Mom...if they were bad, why'd you eat half of them?"

"Take them back, Stuart. They're terrible."

"Mom...you know you can't return food just because you don't like it, right?"

To this, she giggled. Before I was chalking up her ridiculous demand as to her age, but the giggle signified she knew exactly what she was doing. A shrewd tactic, one designed to eat a half bag of gross cookies for free, a ploy worthy of the most tactical military minds of our times. Unfortunately, I was the expendable soldier tasked with carrying out this suicide mission.

Realizing that I couldn't stand up to my superiors, I set out on my mission of humiliation. Choosing to get that job over with before my shopping, head down, I raced to the customer service desk with cookies in hand.

"Can I help you?"

"Um...yeah...I hope so." I gave a little nervous chuckle, hoping to disarm the bomb I was about to drop. But instead, it took me back to the early days when my voice was changing. "I...uh...need to return these," I squeaked.

The grocery clerk grabbed the package, turned it over and over. First her eyebrows raised, then they plunged downward in a menacing scowl. Tough crowd.

"They're not mine," I hastily added in a weak voice. "They're for my mom. I told her that--"

"What's wrong with them?" Still turning the package over and over.

"My mom...NOT ME...says they were stale."

"But she ate half of them."

"I know, I tried to talk her out of this, but--" 

"Fine," she sighed. What little charm I thought I possessed wasn't nearly potent enough. Then she lightened a bit, looked around like a spy, finally grinned. She held the package out to me. "Want one?"

"Um...no thanks." 

First, they looked gross. Second, I thought it might be some kind of undercover trap to capture the notorious cookie bandit who'd been returning half eaten cookies across the greater Kansas City metro area.

I raced away and got Mom's shopping done in record time.

Mom, I miss and love you dearly. But not some of the things you used to send me out to do.

Speaking of guys who have to run fast out of necessity, consider the plight of poor Wendell Worthy. Bad guys force him to run across downtown Kansas City in a limited time to save his brother's life and bring back some takeout chili. Dressed in nothing but his tennis shoes and his tighty-whities. It's complicated. Read about the dangerous situations, wacky mishaps, and bizarre characters Wendell encounters through the night in my comical suspense thriller, Chili Run! It's the perfect book for the reader on the go.