Do you want a cookie?- What?- A cookie. Like an Oreo. Do you want one?- No.- How can you not want a cookie?- I just don't.- Okay, fine,let's say you did want a cookie. Let's say you were dying for a cookie, and there were cookies in the cupboard. What would you do?- I'd eat a cookie?- Exactly. That's all I'm saying.- What are you saying?- That if people want cookies, they should get a cookie. It's what people do.- Let me guess. Dad won't let you have acookie?- No. Even though I'm practically starving to death, he won't even consider it. He says I have to have a sandwich first.- And you don't think that's fair.- You just said you'd get a cookie if you wanted one. So why can't I? I'm not a little kid. I can make my own decisions.- Hmm. I can see why this bothers you somuch.- It's not fair. If he wants a cookie, he can have one. If you want a cookie,you can have one. But if I want a cookie, the rules don't count. Like yousaid, it's not fair.- So what are you going to do?- I'm going to eat a sandwich. Because I have to. Because the world isn't fairto ten-year-olds.
Did you catch the time-of-great-suffering thing?”Her expression softened. “Can you just make sure I’m not around when it happens?”“No can do,” I said, strolling back to my office with a negating wave of my hand. “If I have to suffer, then so does everyone else within a ten-mile radius.”She pursed her lips. “What ever happened to taking one for the team?”“Was never much of a team player.”“Sacrificing yourself for the greater good?”“Not that into human sacrifice.”“Suffering in silence?”I stopped and turned back to her, my eyes narrowing accusingly. “If I have to suffer, I’ll be screaming your name at the top of my lungs the whole time. You’ll be able to hear me all the way to Jersey, mark my words.”- Charley to Cookie
Am I alone in this mother-food connection or does being with your mom trigger the sudden and voracious need for large amounts of mac & cheese, rice pudding, and the scraps along the side of a bowl of cookie dough?
Everyone needs to calm down! Okay, you got a weird cookie. So what? I don’t mean to swat your ego here, buddy, but this smacks a little narcissistic for me. God is not trying to communicate to you through a cookie. It doesn’t work that way. God’s not all Jack-and-the-magic-beans and tooth-beneath-the pillow voodoo. You don’t just close your eyes, flap open your Bible, and slam a steak knife into a verse. It’s that sort of thinking that leads to witch trials and Senate probes.
That’s the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan – there’s no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.