Friday, May 23, 2014

Free Doughnuts Might be Treacherous

"Hey Shawn, do you want a doughnut?"

Surely a voice from heaven just announced a blessing into my ear canals! I quickly identified the source of the heavenly blessing: Mom's voice coming through the office intercom. I checked my pulse. It was still pulsing, therefore I was in the mood for a doughnut. I quickly replied to the affirmative and ran into the house, located a mere 50 feet from the shop.

Mom handed me a hot, glazed doughnut and a glass of cold milk. I chowed into the doughnut hungrily.

"I made doughnuts! Accidentally." Sheryl exclaimed.

I gave my sister Sheryl a curious glance.

"Eat it quick, because it's tasty now but it's probably going to harden." Mom added.

I shifted my increasing curiosity from Sheryl to Mom.

"Dad was hiding these doughnuts from us." Mom said.

"Yeah but we found them." added Sheryl triumphantly. "He hid them in the oven."

"What?" I replied. It came out like "Whaff?" due to the mouthful of doughnut I was chewing.


  

"We found them when we started preheating the oven for cookies." Sheryl explained, fanning her arm to display the pans and pans of raw cookies waiting to enter the oven.


Boys, I know what you're thinking.
"A gorgeous woman that also happens to be incredible at making cookies? MARRY ME NOW!"
But Sheryl is not allowed to date until she's 18, and since she's currently 7 years old,
that means you have to wait another 11 years before you come a'courtin.


"What!!" I replied, finally identifying the odd smell wafting through the kitchen as the scent of burnt plastic.



"Dad brought a box of doughnuts home last night and Sheryl found them immediately and helped herself to a couple, so he hid them so she couldn't find them." Mom expounded. "We didn't even eat them for breakfast, which is what he bought them for." Mom added, wistfully.


Box 'O Doughnuts clearly wins THIS round of hide 'n seek.


"I only ate two." Sheryl countered.

I eyeballed my half-eaten doughnut. Perhaps it didn't start its life out glazed.

"So yeah we aren't sure if these doughnuts have any plastic in them, but we're Mennonites and we don't want any food to go to waste." Mom laughed. These words spoken by the woman that often pitches food if it hasn't been consumed within seven days. Perfectly good food, I might add! The food she pitches could probably keep a whole passel of bachelors from starving to death.

I finished the doughnut. It tasted slightly funny. Or was that my over-active imagination? My diet doesn't include very much plastic, so how could I know I was tasting plastic now?

"We'll be keeping an eye on you for the next hour or so, to see if it has any effect on you." Mom said, reassuringly.

I reasoned it would be a good way to perish. Local newspapers could proclaim. "Death by Doughnut: Detox was Drastically Delayed" or something along those lines. The Kalona News might even place the story on their front page, but only because 1) the Kalona News places twenty stories on the front page and tells you to continue reading "on page 4A" and 2) doughnuts are a big deal to the sleepy little town of 2,421. We take our doughnuts seriously around here. They're made fresh and sold at the Kalona Bakery as well as the Golden Delight Bakery, but you can also find doughnuts at all the gas stations, the Kalona General Store, and JW's Grocery. Kalona's welcome signs and visitor brochures don't say "We strive to make sure no man, woman, or child is left doughnutless." but they probably should.

Perhaps someday I'll become a pastry connoisseur and turn down inferior doughnuts. But for the time being, I'll accept freebies, even if I have to pick a little bit of melted plastic off of them. 

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