Cookies With a Bad Attitude

I am not a good grocery shopper. If left to my own devices (and this has happened before), I would come home with ice cream, fudgesicles, cookies and more ice cream. Even now, it is Tommie's task to make sure we come home with "real food." Still, I treat myself to at least one desert (okay, maybe more like three) per trip.

While shopping two weeks ago, I had a hankering for cookies...and those little Keebler elf-shaped sandwich cookies were calling my name. But something in the back of my mind said, "Don't get the elves," and it sounded a lot like my mother. The same thing happened this week; I thought "Mmmm, little elf cookies," but I grabbed the Vienna Fingers instead.

When I got home, sat down with my Vienna Fingers, and gave a satisfied smile at the little gray-haired Keebler elf perched on the corner of the package, I suddenly remembered my Mom's aversion to the elf cookies. Maybe she didn't like them herself or thought they were too sugary, but while she tolerated Vienna Fingers, and the chocolate covered graham crackers, she would NOT give in to the elves...they bothered her. I seem to remember Mr. Keebler Elf bothering her...something about him "having a bad attitude." Naturally, the elf cookies, when ingested, would have had some kind of negative effect on our own attitudes.

The cookies themselves are really nothing to write home about...fake chocolate frosting between two vanilla cookies in the shape of an elf...but my God they tasted good when your own mother refused them. Mom will probably read this anecdote and say, "I never said that," but that's how a child deprived of elf cookies remembers it, and it wouldn't be all that unlikely...after all, this is the woman who wouldn't let my sister and I watch the cartoons Tom & Jerry because they were too violent, or Woody the Woodpecker because he was a bad influence. When my sister and I would wake up before my parents some mornings and turn on Woody, we thought we were badass.

But, perhaps, Mom was right. The T.V. show "The Simpson's" overly violent cat and mouse duo (Itchy & Scratchy) were based off Tom & Jerry; my sister did start imitating Woody the Woodpecker's laugh (which was extremely annoying), and every time I go down the cookie isle, those little elves call out to me and that unassuming grandfatherly Keebler Elf gets in my head like the little devil he is and murmurs, "Come on, you know you want them." And despite his bad attitude, he has me hooked.