Kids These Days 38

This past weekend when I was seeing Godzilla with my cousin we stopped off at the little cafe they have there and she got coffee and a cookie. She asked the cashier if the cookies tasted like cafeteria cookie and he just shrugged. When someone says “cafeteria cookie” I know exactly what they are talking about. There is a taste, texture, and smell that goes into one of these type of cookies that is just incredible. I started telling her about the one day at school when the cookies were “burned” so they were handing them out for free.

I took four and ran off with them hidden as if they were stolen. These cookies were a hot commodity! I felt like that Black lady in that episode of The Chappelle Show when Black people got reparations and she said to the newscaster “Hide ya money, ya'll! There's poor people around! With ya broke ass!” because this was not a school occupied by rich children. These cookies cost a quarter and quarters were a big deal when I was little.

Oh, so many cookies could be bought...

A quarter gave you the power to do so much. From the age of about 5 till I was 9 years old I would get a quarter from my mother every day. Now, as a child I was far more impulsive than I am now. Nowadays I'm only impulsive when it comes to things like eating too much and fucking. On most days I was able to hold onto that quarter for the entire school day and afterward head to Webb's Liquor Store on Central. But there were those days where after eating my awesome school lunch of taco pizza and ice cream that said “Vote For Jesse (Jackson)” on the lid I would linger for too long and the whiff of cookies would float my way. The quarter in my pocket would start talking to me like The One Ring.

Quarter: I smell cookies...

Dante: Me too!

Quarter: We should get a cookie.

Dante: But I wanna play Rolling Thunder after school.

Quarter: Ask Grandmama for me of me...after the cookie.

Dante: I asked for a quarter yesterday and she said no.

Quarter: Stop living in the past! Cookie now. Video game later.

Dante: I wanna go play dodgeball.

Quarter: Cookie now!

Shit was real. Those cookies were that powerful. So when my cousin and I were sitting in the theater she handed me a chunk. As soon as my teeth hit it, not even my tongue, I knew that it was gonna taste like a cafeteria cookie. It did and it made me happy as I sat through the rest of the movie with bacon burger in my stomach and the taste of that cookie in my mouth.

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