“Did you get a free cookie? I didn’t get a free cookie,” declares the middle-aged woman. She’s addressing the man in front of her in the line to pay. The bakery worker has told the man behind her that he’ll be getting a cookie with his order, gratis.
Free cookies. What? Does she think she’s four-years old and entitled to one? Is it suddenly nineteen sixty-four, and she’s in the German pork store with her mother, knowing that smiling rosy-cheeked Richie, the guy behind the meat counter, will slice a piece of baloney and reach over as she stands on tiptoes to accept it even though she’s not particularly fond of baloney, but even back then she’s enough of a people-pleaser to act as if it’s making her day—receiving that slimy piece of meat crafted from undisclosed animal parts and stuffing it into her mouth as if she loved it?
No. It’s nothing like that.
It’s sixty years later, different state, mother long gone and she likes cookies. Always has.
The man in front of her, younger by more than twenty years, is tall, heavyset, dark-skinned with shaved head and a beard. He turns to her with a smile.
“You offering me a cookie?” he asks.
“Not unless you’re good,” she says. “They offered this guy,” she nods to the trim older man in a navy Lacoste tennis shirt behind her, “a free cookie.”
“And here’s your cookie,” the cashier says to the man ahead ahead.
The woman asks again, “Am I getting a free cookie?” She looks at the guy behind her. “See what you started?”
“A cookie revolution,” the man in front declares.
The man behind her isn’t sure what to make of any of this. Just wants his buttered baguette. Probably doesn’t like sweets.
“Goodness knows we need a revolution right now,” the woman declares.
She’s not sure if the guy behind agrees, but the fellow in front turns around and says, “Shhhh,” with a big grin.
The woman lives for this, engaging strangers, drawing them in, seeing how long until they bust out, create a spontaneous flash mob of three, acting out a bit of political drama set in the bakery theater.
In this instance at least two of the actors walk away feeling good, and everyone— whether they want one or not—gets a cookie.
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