When The Chips Were Down, I Came Through

by Kevin Burton

   Briefly, I stuck to my guns, relied on my own resources, ever so briefly. And I can’t tell you why.

   This was misguided, but I rebounded quickly and it all worked out.

   It was just after 8 p.m. and my wife Jeannette approached, walking with purpose into the mancave command center. I was very obviously, and as always,  deep in thought on weighty matters. But she brushed that aside and  didn’t mince words.

   “I started making the cookies…and I am out of vanilla….”

   The tone of her voice and the look on her face caused me to “scramble” in the military parlance.  I needed to move and I did.

   As per usual I was in my quarantine uniform, sweatpants, t-shirt, tube socks. I stormed upstairs to where the bluejeans are kept for just such an occasion. 

   Unless you are some kind of jive rookie, you know that vacations don’t start when somebody turns the ignition key.  Vacations start in the mind when you get out the maps and book your hotels and they really rev up when somebody starts making chocolate chip cookies.

   So the cookies we desperately needed for our planned trip to Memphis, and the other cookies we needed as a gift to our favorite cat-sitter Linda were on the line.

   The closest grocery store closed at 9. I needed to make it happen.

   Also you need to know that the Final Four games were on TV. And though all the teams I care about, and the others I sort of care about had long since been eliminated, a man is still required to tune in, at least to go through the motions.

   Notice I didn’t stop to ask why vanilla was needed for chocolate chip cookies. These are not vanilla cookies. I wouldn’t put on pants late at night to foster the production of vanilla cookies.

    But the vanilla angle was one I would not pursue. I put this into the impossibly girly category of things I did not know and did not want to know,  such as why purses need to match shoes. I have devoured maybe thousands of my wife’s chocolate chip cookies and not once has it occurred to me to ask what ingredients went into them.

    But there I was, reacting on instinct, on a Saturday night. Only thing is, I had never marched into an honest to-God grocery store and bought vanilla.

   I have tripped over little bottles of vanilla in the cabinet as I was looking for something much more valuable, such as cayenne pepper, but this was my maiden voyage on the purchase.

   Vanilla can not be found next to the Chili Cheese Fritos, or the Hormel Pepperoni slices, or the thin-sliced pork chops or the Fancy Feast, classic pate, beef flavored cat food. So I was out to sea.

   And like I said, at first I thought I could find it myself.  Jeannette had taken a picture of the bottle that we just used up and sent it to me both by text and e-mail.

   Fellas, I tell you, that’s all I had to go on.

    After a short time of looking for vanilla on my own, I came to my senses, turned to a clerk I recognized as having been helpful before and I used the resources at hand, what Jeannette calls my “announcer voice.”

    And my mind went back to Ohio, to Spring nights and tornado warnings, sirens and weather radar. Everything was on the line.

   “This is a cookie emergency!” I declared.

   The key to driving home the point is the way you say the word “this.” It lets a person know that regularly-scheduled programming has been put aside, and for very good reason. 

   The only thing I lacked was the echo effect on the word “emergency-cy-cy-cy.”

   The clerk was a true pro. Her eyes widened,  her jaws tightened and she nodded slightly. She skipped the usual spiel about “aisle 5” and led me directly to the vanilla, to all the options available.

   It’s at this time when I am thankful for professionals who care about their fellow man. She had my back and I almost wish we had enough cookies to cut her in on the deal. But I’m sure she would have waved this notion off and said “all in a day’s work.”

   On our trip east, during our hotel stay, and for the blessed cat-sitter, the cookies were savored, a delicious memory from a tense moment when the planets miraculously aligned.

   You may say Jeannette played a much larger role than I in all of this, as the actual baker of the cookies, and you may be right. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, baby. What I have written, I have written.