Transformation

This morning I picked up a coffee through the Starbucks "drive-thru", which isn't a daily habit, but certainly something of which I partake frequently. The craving struck me that I should get a cookie. I only get a cookie craving once every four years or something. Must be the leap year syndrome. Don't ask me what my rationalizations were at the time - I can barely remember them as it is.

But I definitely remember wanting a cookie.

I asked for a sugar cookie, to which I was told "We don't have any. Do you want a Black and White cookie instead? It's kinda sugary."

And me, I just went with it. Again, I don't know why, really. Maybe it was her suggestive tone - like it was just as good, a worthy substitute for my sugar-cookie-needs.

"Okay," I say. "Sure. I'll have one of those."

She gives me my total, and I'm glad they don't have a little camera by the order screen, because I fully balked. Who would willingly pay $2 for a damn cookie?! Apparently I would, because I didn't complain or change my order. I just drove around and paid for it.

I waited patiently and was handed my coffee first - a Venti Iced Non-fat Light Ice No Whip White Mocha Latte if you must know - and then my little baggie with my surprise cookie inside. So off I go, my drink in the cupholder and my cookie propped in the passenger seat, ignored while I finished singing along to my BtVS Once More, With Feeling Soundtrack CD. (Yes, I am one of those crazy people you see in the morning, singing along full-blast with whatever the hell it is I am listening to... And I like the BtVS:OMWF Soundtrack because - duh - it's my fav episode. So I sing along and it helps me wake up, getting my brain in gear.)

Once I've finished singing like an idiot, I pull my cookie bag onto my lap and reach in, watching the road and paying little attention to what my hand is doing. I feel out the cookie, noting silently that the thing is almost as big as my head, and only slightly smaller than your average cowboy belt buckle. I tear off a piece and was surprised at how spongy it felt. Like... you know, a stale pancake or something.

I pop the piece in my mouth, and it's exactly NOTHING like a sugar cookie. It's more like a, well, a pancake with that hard confectioneer's sugar icing coating the top of it. I barely manage to keep it in my mouth.

So now, not only do I NOT have a sugar cookie, I have a dry, cold pancake with sick icing on it. I blindly pick off the icing within the confines of that little paper bag, putting the plain mock-cookie-pancake substance in my mouth.

Which is quite nice without the icing. So I ate as much as I could and balled up the rest in that paper bag. Didn't want all those crumbs and icing bits spilling out into my car.

I have decided, though, that I'll not be hoodwinked into ordering something other than what I wanted ever again. Who the heck wants an old pancake instead of a sugar cookie anyway? The consistencies of each edible are considerably different, and all-together unsatisfying if you were expecting one over the other.