That's good enough for me

I don't know why I stopped for a cookie, since I was on my way to lunch. It was just one of those little cravings; I don't often get warm cookies. In fact, even cookies made soft by heavy dosing of frightening chemicals are rare; most of what I can get are hard. Overall that's probably enough reason to buy one from a baker's kiosk.

The clerk took the cookie I'd picked and slipped it into a slender paper bag. I was ready to chuckle about this, since I'd think just the plastic sheet used to pick it up would be adequate. If I'd ordered a dozen or so, then a bag would obviously be needed. As it was I just grinned at the silliness as my clerk folded the end over several times, and taped it up.

But then -- the other clerk, tending the next person in line, took a plastic scoop full of small cookies to the scales next to the register. As she turned back to get another scoop, she bumped into my clerk, who dropped the bag. A-ha! Clearly, my mental snickering was premature and putting the cookie in a bag and taping it shut was a perfectly wise precaution, saving a cookie that'd otherwise go to waste.

Inwardly I nodded at the lesson taught me, when my clerk apologized, put the bag on the back shelf, and got a new cookie for me. Which, of course, she put in a paper bag, folded over several times, and taped up.

I like the people who handle my food to have reasonable obsessive-compulsive disorders, but this is getting a bit much.

Trivia: The word ``cookies'' comes from the Dutch, ``koeckjes'', literally, little cakes, which was current in Manhattan in October 1661. Source: The Island at the Centre of the World, Russell Shorto.

Currently Reading: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W Tuchman.