Oreos aren’t cookies

Rise and shine, everyone. This is Mental Melvin on 96.9, the sunshine station, with another brand new day of utter and total annoyance from yours truly. If you’ve got your own music, I’d suggest you play it instead of listening to not so funny me!

Mental Melvin didn’t say that exactly. But I think he should’ve. Why would I want to listen to a two bit DJ that’s pretending to be funny? Give me the news. Give me the weather, traffic report–anything but Mental Melvin. Give me silence. I turn off the radio.

Consolidated Flour Mills, reads the sign in glorious neon. Hello work.

“Philosophy melosophy.” Yousif picks up his teacup, “I don’t care what you make of life, as long as you make something out,”

“of it,” I interject.

“No, out of yourself. I don’t care what you think about all of this,” Yousif says, sweeping his hand. “Philosophies are a dime a dozen. In fact, how about this one right here,” he says, holding an Oreo, “life’s a cookie,” and takes a bite. He looks at it with reverence.

“Life’s not a cookie. It’s not like that, Yousif. Besides, an Oreo is way too complicated to be called a cookie.”

“No it isn’t, it’s a cookie. Looks like one, says so on the pack too.”

“Look at that Oreo. It’s a damn cake compared to a cookie.”

“It’s a cookie, Ameer,” he says.

“No, Yousif, it’s a philosophy,” I say, not looking at him, rather at steam rising from my coffee.

Yousif’s my colleague. He sits in a coveted vubicle, a cubicle next to a window. He has every right to be gung-ho. He has every right to call an Oreo a cookie. Or a philosophy.

“Where’s the teaboy? Isn’t he supposed to clean up this mess?” says Yousif.

Unwashed mugs and cups are strewn across the kitchenette’s counter. “You know, I hear they saw a roach on the fourth floor kitchen. It was floating in the water bottle. Mariam swears it was still alive after the bottle was drained.”

“It’s claimed these things can survive a nuclear detonation,” I say.

“Anyone can survive a nuke attack, you just have to be somewhere else, Ameer,” Yousif says.

“That doesn’t make sense, you,”

“Wouldn’t be where the attack happens? Well, it doesn’t matter, you’ll be somewhere but not there, and that, my friend, is survival of the luckiest.”

A philosophy of luck. That’s rich.

Fair, sunny weather lends itself to lunch out under the shade of Park Corner Restaurant.

“Park Corner, that’s just wrong,” I say.

Yousif keeps on eating, not minding me.

“You’d think it’s in reference to an actual park.”

“But it is,” Yousif says. “What’re you on about?”

“Sure, a car park. Not a park as in trees and grass and perhaps a babbling brook.”

“They make good sandwiches, and fries too, these are really good, have some,” he says.

I have some. They’re good. Almost perfect–crisp on the outside, soft and piping hot on the inside. It’s fries, good fries, not cookies; life’s like fries.

“Alright everyone, it’s super quick meet up time,” hollers McMurry from his office, the department head.

The super quick meet up was one of the recent ‘innovations’ introduced shortly after McMurry joined. It’s supposed to “keep things in check everyday,” according to McMurry.

“Super quick my,” I start.

“Don’t start,” says Yousif, “just get the reports and let’s be done with.”

“McMurry should call it a quickie meeting, what’s with all the wordy super quick meet up?”

“Here, take these reports as well, I’ll be leaving early tonight. You’ll have to manage a quickie all by yourself with McMurry tonight.”

“Screw you, Yousif.”

“And goodnight to you too,” he winks and leaves, whistling a happy tune.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard people whistling sad tunes. No one does that. Maybe they should.

“Are you ready, Ameer?” startles me McMurry as he pops out of his office door.

Screw you too.

“Sure, I’ve got the reports right here, Jim,” I say. I surprise myself at how I could grin as if I really want to stay twenty minutes in an office that epitomizes nothing but paperwork.

“We’ve had three quarters of great performance and now this happens, Ameer? I don’t understand. Where did we go wrong?” McMurry says.

We didn’t go wrong. Everything else went wrong though, Jim. “I would say it’s a seasonal variation. Demand is like that for our products, perhaps.”

“Nonsense, over 80% of our revenue comes from our flour mills. How could flour be seasonal, Ameer? People bake all year round.”

“Cookies.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Cookies, people bake cookies all year round.”

“That’s true,”

“And you know, I think Park Corner dips their fries in flour before frying, helps give those spuds that perfect texture,”

“And the point of what you’re saying?” he says pointing at the reports.

“Well, it’s like this, you need flour to make cookies and perfect fries, and flour in general to have CFM as a going concern in the first place. And so, you see, the roach wouldn’t have been in the water bottle if it wasn’t for people wanting cookies and fries. You wouldn’t have CFM as a business.

“The roach has its place. We just don’t care much for it, but if that roach would not have ended up in the water bottle, I would probably be still trying to find meaning in something meaningless, like this report here. The fact is, now, the roach has given me meaning, for its existence is not merely a matter of happy coincidences flung together across a sphere of attributes that might, or might not make sense to you and me.

“The roach is what gives each and everyone of us meaning, just as we do to it, Jim.”

“How was the meeting,” Yousif says as he follows me out.

“Weren’t you supposed to be gone already?”

“Oh, Mariam had a problem–roaches. I, my friend, had to swat each and every one of them buggers.”

• fiction
• writing