Sometimes in life, a cookie must fall
Yesterday I was putting away groceries, including double-layer Oreo cookies, one layer with normal filling and one layer with chocolate. I poured these cookies into our side-loading cookie jar and the last one hit the rim, bounced off the counter, and headed for the white oak floor. My hand darted down for it, but the Oreo ricocheted off my palm and continued to fall. I caught it with my fingers two inches above the wood.
By all rights, I should have eaten the cookie then. Goodness knows, I’d earned it. That was quite a catch. But I was not hungry, so I put the cookie back in the jar and went about my morning.
After lunch I was ready for that cookie. I pulled it out of the jar, along with a second, and that first cookie slipped through my fingers and plummeted to the floor.
I understood the message immediately. This cookie was destined to hit the floor. That was why it had taken me extra effort to stop its fall earlier, and why I had not felt hungry enough to eat the cookie when it was in my hand. I had only delayed the inevitable.
Sure, this was just a cookie, but in the famous story of Isaac Newton, what is it that gives him his inspirational moment about gravity? Just an apple, also falling.
Inspiration does not always come accompanied by fanfare. Sometimes it comes to us in fleeting moments, triggered by the smallest events. On any given day, at any given time, you might see, hear, feel, taste, or smell something that hits you just right and changes your whole universe.
For example, about twelve years ago I heard a Cherry Poppin’ Daddies song I’d listened to a hundred times before: Irish Whisky. That night, though, it hit me just right and motivated me to get off my ass and become a writer.
Yesterday I saw a cookie fall twice in one day, and the second time it hit the floor. I couldn’t stop it.
So, does that mean I now believe in predestination? Nope. Sometimes a cookie is just a cookie. I’m too attached to free will as a concept to surrender it easily.
I did eat the cookie though, because hey, five second rule.
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Biggest news of late is that my short story “The Curse of Valassa” received Honorable Mention in the fourth quarter of the 2012 Writers of the Future Contest.
