World going to hell & all I wanted was a Cadbury Egg

(657 words)

Many frontline medical men and women are risking their lives to save total strangers.

Today, I risked my life because I was craving one of those Cadbury eggs.

Chocolate shell, creamy filling, I just love ‘em. How much? The day chickens start laying Cadbury eggs is the day I vow I’ll become a chicken farmer

The coronavirus crisis is challenging us all to differentiate between wants and needs.

For instance, I didn’t want to put air in my tires, but the “low tire air pressure” snitch light was on and I figured I needed to.

So this morning I drove the 0.06 miles between my office and Sheetz, the near-ubiquitous convenience mart that sells pretty much everything except sheets. I tried to think how I could maximize my time spent in the danger zone.

Did I need batteries? Milk? Bread? Another 100 yards of abrasive TP?

I did not. So I wouldn’t have to enter the store. This was reassuring because we all now know how a deliberate mingle with potential carriers can get you killed.

Still, some carefree part of my brain signaled, psst, you know Cadbury eggs are right there by the register and you love Cadbury eggs.

But what if someone saw me? What if someone took a picture on buying candy as the world was going into lockdown? Would someone candy shame me on Facebook?

I thought of a dozen common sense arguments Dr. Anthony Fauci would make against the purchase.

But the craving was intense.

A big part of my concerns is that the COVID-19 germ has in my eyes achieved mythic status. It’s the uber-virus. It’s bent on world domination. It will wipe out anything that gets in its way. It’s behaving like a Fascist European nation did in 1939.

That nation’s name? It’s pronounced GERM-a-nee.

Let’s just assume that’s a coincidence.

I remain stunned that we need to keep six feet between us or the germ can leap from an infected carrier to a healthy innocent.

It boggles the mind.

First of all, why would it risk leaving any host that still had a heartbeat? It’s not only impractical, it’s downright rude.

More fearsome to me is the idea that these germs can launch off one person and land on another 4- to 5-feet away.

Chart it to scale and it’d be like me broad jumping from Latrobe and sticking the landing in Denver.

For cryin’ out loud, they don’t even have legs, much less wings.

We’re entering an interesting phase of the crisis. Even the skeptics are becoming convinced this is, duh, something serious. And you’re starting to see predictable social media spats between people who disagree on the best way to flatten the curve.

The whole “judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged” mindset is the second thing to go in a crisis. 

The first?

Toilet paper!

People are critical of hoarders and those trying to make an indecent profit off their stash, but to me it makes perfect sense.

The biggest assholes are always going to need the most toilet paper.

I apologize for that. We’re all under a lot of stress.

I wonder if my jocular tone might dismay some of you who’d conclude I just don’t get it, that writing about candy when the whole world is going to hell demeans so much suffering.

But I have to be honest and right then at that moment I wanted nothing on Earth more than that sweet confection. 

Does the confession make me a scoundrel? A lout? Maybe, say, a cad?

Or am I sugar-coating it? Will steadfast readers depart? Could this bury me?

Did I lay an egg?

Hmmm…

Cad?

Bury? 

Egg?

Geez, it’s like I’ve lost all perspective.

Maybe it’s just a coping mechanism. 

Or maybe it’s a case of wanting something really bad so for at least a moment you forget about getting something really bad nobody wants.

Twinkie bankruptcy: time to nut up or shut up

I was overcome by an alien impulse as I strolled down nutritionally desolate aisle 6 of the local grocery store.

Seize the Twinkies!

News that Hostess Brands, makers of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, was going bankrupt had apparently triggered a run on the golden sponge cakes with creamy fillings.

Some Twinkie fiends had already laid siege to the shelf. There were only three 10-packs of the indestructible treats still for sale for $4.29 each.

The boxes show the smilin’ Twinkie the Kid cowboy, the creation of some former art student who may once have fancied him or herself the next Picasso, and a supersized Twinkie with the nitpicky legal disclaimer “Product Enlarged to Show Detail.”

That Twinkies were sinking is something that just last year would never have registered with me.

It’s probably been more than 30 years since I’d last eaten one.

If that makes me sound like some sort of snack food snob, it’s misleading.

I eat tons of crap. I love chips, pretzels and about any dark sweetness produced in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a lovely company town that looks like all company towns would look if companies were run by 6 year olds.

And, as I’ve said before, the day chickens start laying Cadbury eggs is the day I become a chicken farmer.

So while the Twinkie’s never tickled my taste buds, something about its forbidden waste always tempted.

The reason I felt compelled to start hoarding Twinkies has less to do with the unsinkable pastry -- for experimental purposes I just submerged one an hour ago (still afloat) -- than it does with Tallahassee.

Not the city.

I’m talking about Tallahassee, the redneck zombie slayer.

Tallahassee is the name of the Woody Harrelson character from the uproarious 2009 movie, “Zombieland.”

It’s a difficult comedy to sell to dainty viewers who are put off by films that include graphic scenes of the living dead feasting on human flesh.

So now when people ask me what “Zombieland” is about, I never say it’s about zombies.

I say it’s about one man’s quest for the world’s last Twinkie.

And it is.

Tallahassee -- to prevent from becoming too familiar, they call each other by their hometowns -- realizes that the zombie apocalypse means production of his beloved Twinkies has forever ceased.

Somewhere exists, he knows, a box of Twinkies.

“Not just any box of Twinkies, the last box of Twinkies that anyone will enjoy in the whole universe. Believe it or not, Twinkies have an expiration date. Some day very soon, life’s little Twinkie gauge is gonna go . . . empty.”

So, being a careful sort, I had to buy a 10-pack.

Like I said, I haven’t eaten a Twinkie since the late 1970s, but something about them has always beckoned. It’s just so iconic.

It’s the subject of a book I have to get around to reading. It’s Steve Ettlinger’s “Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover how the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined) and Manipulated into What America Eats.”

Ettlinger explores how things like Polysorbate 60, Sodium Caseinate and beef fat become part of a simple snack cake.

The concept is pure genius.

I showed Val the box of Twinkies like it was a new puppy.

“Look at this!” I said. “I’ll bet I haven’t had a Twinkie since 1979!”

“That’s probably about when those Twinkies were made,” she observed.

Deciding to savor the anticipation, I put the box aside until the kids were in bed.

Coincidentally, Val had taped a movie made at roughly the same time she suspects the Twinkies were. It was “Broadcast News” from 1976.

What a great, prophetic movie.

It’s funny, because I grew up in the ‘70s and remember it being a time of innocent joy. There was The Partridge Family, Speed Racer, The Steel Curtain and the dawning awareness that life was getting more interesting as one-by-one the girls began filling out their sweaters.

“Broadcast News” reminded me of all the unholy tumult that was off the radar for a boy who’d yet to grasp the importance of the daily news.

There was Patty Hearst, the Munich Olympics, Pol Pot, Watergate, the Nixon pardon and the chaotic conclusion of the Vietnam War.

It wasn’t nearly as idyllic as I remember. Sure, parts of it were decent, but overall it hurt a lot of people and left a bad aftertaste.

You know what?

So did the Twinkie.