The Cookie Jar
When I was a child, my grandmother would bake the most delicious-smelling cookies. Her house would be full of the aroma of those treats as they baked in her oven. She would remove them and place them on the various cooling wire stands as my siblings and me would stand and watch, eyes wide and mouths salivating. The flavours that she would make were so enticing. Chocolate chip, peanut butter, fudge chocolate, cinnamon, cranberry and orange and white chocolate. We were not allowed to eat them when they were warm, even though we knew from our mother’s cookies that they tasted sensational in this state. The selection of mouth-watering treats was placed inside a large cookie jar and placed on a shelf.
“Now, ” my grandmother would announce, ” cookies must be earned. Good behaviour will result in being given a cookie of your favourite flavour.”
“I like chocolate chip best of all,” my sister would declare.
“I prefer peanut butter,” my elder half- brother would announce.
“It’s got to be cinnamon for me,” weighed in my younger brother as he fizzed with excitement. I would stand saying nothing.
“What about you HG ? Which is your favourite?” asked my grandmother as she leant down to level with my face,
“I like them all grandma, I don’t have a favourite,” I would answer.
My grandmother would laugh.
“Oh you can’t have them all HG, you’ll be sick,” she would say and ruffle my hair.
“He will grandma, he is greedy,” my sister would scold and I would give her my look. I had perfected this stare in the mirror over the preceding summer. I narrowed my eyes and fixed my gaze summoning up every ounce of anger, malice and hatred that I could muster. I found it worked best if I thought of things which angered me. I would recall being left out of the school football team but for no apparent reason. I would remember when my painting did not win the competition organised by the church (“But you came second,” congratulated my younger brother, what’s the good of second?!) and every other injustice that had been meted out to me. I recalled the fury I felt from each act of exclusion and failure to recognise my talents and I channelled it into creating the cold, malicious stare. When I shot it towards my sister she immediately fell quiet. She knew better than to cross me once I had given her that look.
“Well,” my grandmother would continue as she straightened herself, “if you all help me clean the baking utensils you can all have a cookie each. I sneered as my siblings gathered around to assist so readily compliant for such a meagre reward. I turned and walked out of the room unwilling to engage in their collective submission.
“Don’t you want a cookie?” my grandmother would ask, her voice following me as I walked into the garden.
“No thank you,” I called over my shoulder and made my way to my favourite tree to climb high into its branches and sit in splendid isolation looking across the extensive garden which surrounded my grandparents’ impressive house. I would sit up there for hours, master of all I surveyed.
When I returned for dinner my siblings would remind me of how delicious the cookies had tasted yet I was unaffected by their ineffectual goading for I knew that my triumph would surpass their laughable achievement. I merely smiled and got on with eating my dinner.
That night I waited until the rest of the house was asleep and then I made my way downstairs, back into the kitchen. I stood on the cool stone floor, the moonlight shining into the room causing the glass jar to gleam. I hopped up onto one of the kitchen counters and claimed my prize. I placed the jar down before me and lifted off the lid before dipping my hand inside and selecting a white chocolate cookie. I devoured it in three bites. I grabbed a cinnamon one and wolfed that down before attacking a cranberry and orange cookie in much the same way. I pulled the chocolate chip, peanut butter and chocolate fudge flavoured ones and put them beside me, ready to carry to bed. My hand lingered over the jar again. How I wanted to take a further cinnamon cookie and break it up, scattering crumbs besides my younger brother’s bed but I knew that it was futile. My grandmother could never remember how many she had baked of each cookie and she would never notice that six had been taken overnight. That was the basis for my success. Therefore, there was no point in leading a trail to the bed of my younger brother, no matter how satisfying it would have been to have seen him accused and cry as he protested his innocence. I replaced the jar and scooped up my bounty ready to pad back to my bed and enjoy my stolen snacks and reflect on my skills. Even back then I knew what people’s weaknesses were and how best to exploit them.
39 thoughts on “The Cookie Jar”
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‘Cookies must be earned.’ I read this story as a metaphor for ‘love must be earned’ – and to be honest, it made me smile that you refused to play that game, HG. I hope my kids will do that too. Love (and homemade cookies, off course…) are no commodities.
However, I see and it makes me sad that your concept of love already was ‘a game to win’, and you walked away not only refusing to play the game, but planning to win and to take what you considered yours, later.
May I ask you HG, do you remember what your age was, at that time?
9 or 10 I think.
Was cookie grandma your maternal or paternal?
MB
It was HG’s maternal grandmother.
My narc would do this. Would never do what was wanted or expected of him by anyone. At the worst times of my life I remember begging him just to be nice to me, just this once. It made him all the more determined to be as cruel as he possibly could to me. Then when I was broken and a mess, at some point when HE decided to be nice to me, he would switch the hoover on…
My housemate is a bitch and I’m glad she’s moving out this Wed. She’s lucky I’m empathic. Although, yes, I’m glad I threw out the muffins. I did contemplate making more. Ahhh, that’s what a person gets living with other people. I really think I’m meant to be alone. I’m starting to be fine with this new idea.
It’s better to be alone than in bad company (I think George Washington said that, but it’s just common sense).
I’m happy for you. Enjoy your muffins.
I love this story. Very sneaky.
When I was a little girl my parents had a picture/drawing of a boy “Greedy Petey” and it hung on the wall in my brother’s room.
One day I wasn’t sharing and my mom took it down and hung it in my room. She said “look at who is acting like Greedy Petey.” I didn’t like that picture. (I googled it and just like I remember it looks like the candy is in his butt crack.)
My brother was in the other room chanting “You’re Greedy Petey. You’re Greedy Petey. You’re Greedy Petey.”
Thanks for making me smile.
https://youtu.be/jGU_LQMIO4I
I like listening to this one, too. Something about the way HG pronounces “cookies” makes me smile.
I’m also reminded of a cookie jar incident in the life of my N. Oddly he never told me this story himself. It came from several relatives, told pretty much the same from each teller.
The foster family that took him as their own, the mother hears a noise in the hall before dawn, the second day he was there. She goes out into the hall and runs into W, who is 2 1/2 years old. He is buck naked, and has an armload of cookies. The cookie jar is on a top shelf in an upper kitchen cabinet. He thinks she is now going to take away his cookies! But she calms him by letting him keep the cookies, if he will show her how he got them.
He returns to the kitchen and opens the bottom cabinet door, uses the shelves like a ladder. He gets to the counter, stands on that, stretches a bit, till he can step on the lower shelf of the upper cabinet, then reaches till he can get the cookie jar, and kinda presses it against his self and the shelves, to lower it to the counter.
He gets praised for his smarts and daring, then is asked to repeat the performance in front of the rest of the family, and a camera!
So here is a boy whose parents threw him away by just leaving him at a hospital when he was very sick with tuberculosis, then he is rejoined to his siblings, and is encouraged to be the center of attention, not punished or corrected, and made to feel special, as he was a “birthday present” for his foster mom, the closest she would ever get to having a baby of her own.
Kinda double mind fuck for him. And I, being told the story AND shown these pictures of a cute rascally child, set myself up to make excuses for him, that he is still a cute rascally child, suffering unjustly from abandonment, who can be loved into caring about others.
Instead I see that he is not a child any longer, I can’t help him, I didn’t understand how he perceived the world. It is also futile to be angry at someone for being who they are.
Now that I know, I can just avoid someone who would make me miserable,
Oh, and I am first priority, now and ever after.
(Are you sure I can’t become a narcissist? I guess I aim for “more narcissistic qualities” instead? I still feel unempathic envy when I think they can live without a conscience, and I can’t!)
Sorry, ranted all the way off topic. Will go listen to HG say “cookies” s’more.
Chilling.
MB, I did put ex lax in the muffins. Then I felt bad and threw them out. It’s hard for me not to be a total asshole, but empathy got the best of me.
Tammy
Well I guess its best that you threw the muffins out, but you can still relish fantasizing about her having explosive diarrhea and you responding: Are you shitting me? Thats crap. Here have a muffin…
Wha wha………
Tammy,
Good for you, in abandoning that. It doesn’t make you weak to NOT be vindictive. It takes strength to not repay evil with evil. It takes self-control and character to not play THAT game.
Messing with what someone takes into their body should be way out of bounds. You have no idea what the result may be, and why do something that makes you more like someone you don’t respect? Don’t let anyone else’s behavior lower you to hostile/passive-aggressive actions…
Instead, speak up for yourself. Or figure out a way to secure your food.
Do you want to prove, that you have been born a thief, a betrayer, a natural born evil? That it was only “fate” or “karma”? That you have to be a narcissist and there is no way out?
It is still a cheap excuse to avoid responsibility for your further life.
At that age I killed a mouse. Does that mean, that I should have become a violent person? Does that mean, that I was born evil?
I killed that mouse for very egotistical reasons and it was effective. I got what I wanted. I still do not feel guilt or remorse.
Does that mean, that I have more psychopathic traits? Does that mean in your own logic of hierarchy that I am superior to you, because I have more psychopathic traits than you?
I have to disappoint you.
I was a little child. I had no idea of a bad conscience and nobody punished me for killing that mouse.
A few years later I discovered that it was the wrong way to get what I want. I developed a conscience. I decided to have a conscience.
It is not a decision made out of fear or compassion. It is a world view about justice and balance.
Maybe you lost that last rest of natural balance in November, because you did not experience justice. And that might be the last drop for your decision to become what you are diagnosed.
It was your decision and not your fate or genetics. Therefore – empathy or compassion for you is not necessary or helpful.(although I see how extremely hard life made it for you)
You have the power to change evil into something good.
Are you going that way?
I was waiting for the bulimia moment over the toilet at the end, but you’re not a girl.
*Cue lecturing me that eating disorders are not gender specific*
Yes, I know, but I have an image of Meredith Baxter Birney doing the same in a made for tv movie.
Don’t believe me? This aired when I was a kid. They played scary music during her binges. It scared me and I changed the channel and then my friend made fun of me for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VZ7Npyq3NE
I don’t care much for cookies.
Bibi, Good Lord, that scary music was quite dramatic! You’re hilarious. Thanks for sharing. It must have made quite an impact for you to remember it. I don’t think kids worry about calories. HGs attention to his physique came much later I’m sure.
MB:
When you are forced to make scary music upon the sight of someone pigging out–you know you’re onto something! LOL The made for tv movie was called ‘Kate’s Secret’. I was in middle school when it aired. In the clip she looks like she is psychotic over the food. I don’t have bulimia but I imagine that anyone binging in real life would not roll around on the kitchen floor as she does.
She (Meredith–the mom from Family Ties) was also in a movie about having breast cancer (called ‘My Breast’) and then a movie about being a heroin junkie. So bulimia, heroin and breast cancer mostly sums up her acting career.
Imagine dreaming to become some great actress, only to be told, ‘See these cookies? Now eat the shit out of them.’
Oh and as for this movie having an impact? No. I just have one of those memories that recalls lots of useless trivia.
I thought the same, Bibi.
I sometimes think that the narcissistic dynamic is kind of a dig emotional bulimia and anorexia. All that love HG is always searching and extracting from his IPPSs, only to vomit/reject it later.
Same with the negative emotions narcs provoke in others only to feel strong and that they have control. That is kind of anorexic.
These disorders are not totally comparable of course but they do have points in common, I think.
Good point, Lou. I just rewatched that clip and they make it seem like she is orgasming over pate and chicken salad.
Bleh. I totally don’t relate. Gross.
HG, I can completely relate.
Only my 400 pound mother would dominate the kitchen, day and night. It was as if she never slept. I would pretend to walk to the back of the house, grabbing a few cookies here and there.
It freaks me out because somehow I’ve attracted a place to live, just like my childhood home, complete with a bitch just like my mother to deal with. She also steals my food. So I made ex-lax fudge muffins.
Tammy, you really did put ex-lax in the muffins?!?
MB:
Not to involve more useless trivia but that was an episode from Amazing Stories, which premiered in the ’80s. Steven Spielberg was the producer for that show.
A bunch of boys add ex-lax to their babysitter’s hot chocolate. My grandma laughed hysterically at that scene.
(Just as a side note: I am an only child with an empath mom and a lesser narc-sociopath dad. Had to entertain myself. Spent a lot of time watching tv, which has proven to be useful in random online threads as these.)
Bibi, you should go on Jeopardy! It’s one thing to have had exposure to lots of TV. It’s another altogether to be able to recall it on demand. I like the trivial breaks, we gotta have some fun here too!
“So I made ex-lax fudge muffins.”
Tammy – hahaha!
Seriously, though…I only hope that causes her to stop stealing your food.
Dear Mr Tudor,
I didn’t have a close relationship with my grandmother, she was very “icey” and showed no emotion …. she tolerated us ….there were no biscuit or cake making shared memories, although she was a great cook and made amazing date scones with jam and cream
Your “flavours” are very modern, my kids were brought up on old fashioned favourites, however, the difference being my kids wanted to help make them …..their plot was to eat the raw mixture…haha
Cleaning, was scraping the bowl with their fingers, licking the spoon or whisk beaters and waiting as soon as they came out the oven to grab, before going on the cooling rack …pigged out til they were full as a goog
There was no counting what’s left …they ate the lot haha 😂
Luv your personal stories, it’s a rawness that’s real and heartwarming … thank you
Luv Bubbles xx 😘
I used to creep downstairs and cut slices of my mother’s chocolate cake and take them to bed.
I was talking about this the other day at work.
But my mother knew..lol..
I had no choice but to nip down and get the cake it was the best chocolate cake in the world..!
I admitted it when I was 24 and my mother said you silly devil… of course I knew.. there were chocolate crumbs in your bed!!
I thought I was so clever stealing down tiptoeing about and handling the Enormous carving knife considering how little I was.. standing up on a chair to reach the back of the kitchen top sliding the cake plate toward me… I love buttercream to this day.
My mother did not make old bones and passed away youngish. I have many lovely memories of her and this is just a snippet.. I always remember the wonderful baking she did..I remember her turning and smiling at me when I was a tiny little girl …she had a pinny on as usual and she was using a rolling pin making pastry… The smells…ahhh… lovely in the kitchen and her beautiful smile.
Her and my dad used to put big parties on at Christmastime and New Year for all the neighbours. It was great.. everybody came to the house.it was decorated beautifully and there was a really long table full of all the food and treats.
Aye…I will never forget stealing slices of chocolate cake though and thinking that nobody knew…haha.
DebbieWolf
I’m glad you had those experiences and now memories. I always thought they were just the stuff of dreams or movies.
NarcAngel
I know what you mean. I’m sorry that you always thought that..it’s horrifying to read how some people’s childhood was.
My father had a terrible accident when I was a girl.. we had to cope with that later on and for many years until death.
I am really really lucky that I had a lovely mam and dad. We could talk things through and it is true that our Christmases were like something from the movies and it is absolutely true that’s the way it was.
Following the deaths I feel that I became vulnerable to attaching to what I regarded as authority figures… And there were attracted to me. I was heartbroken and to this day still am up to a point… I think I was looking for parental figures in a sense.. wanting to replace… although that is impossible obviously!… what I had had…
I see I became a sitting target.. I was naive and overly trusting… And paid that price big time.
The book Sitting Target by HG is great… Helped me a great deal to understand.
All his books are fab…I think sometimes it’s good to have your own order of how you read them because it opens your own door of understanding in your own personal circumstance before you follow a set order of them and look into things further.
✌️
DebbieWolf
I also related to your post about your affinity for, and care of, animals. I have been responsible for, and cared for many people, but it is only with animals that I felt something more than. It is only with them that I could trust my secrets, share my pain, or experience lightness. Its the closest to love that I think I will ever get and thats ok. I have a deep suspicion of anyone who does not care for animals, and I really dont understand those who do not have care or compassion of animals but have children. I always think of them as not having true care and compassion, but only for that of something in their likeness.
NarcAngel
Absolutely as regards the animals.
I find I can give my whole heart completely because it is given completely without a second thought and is accepted. And the love I offer is needed and wanted. And the love you get back is so innocent and real.
I don’t find dogs to be narcissistic as HG describes… Or pets to be narcissistic as in Feed Me stroke me take me for a walk not in any way at all..anyway animals have their own personalities I had a cat and she did not jump on kitchen tops or even on the furniture because I told her no. I think she thought she was one of the dogs they had their special places and soft pouches to sleep in cosy and warm they have their places and they know them.
I don’t believe in dressing animals up like little children or treating them like children my dogs know they are dogs and they are treated like dogs but that doesn’t stop them having a teddy bear to cuddle as though Pompeii or having cosy blankets and beautiful treatment.
I believe in respect in the animals nature and still providing all the cosseting attention humanly possible.
I am left with animals tthat’ respect me and my space as I do theirs.. animals that do as I ask for their own safety..animals that trust me to care for them. Animals I trust to be there for me too..when there are no people and when people offer nothing and show no respect at all
There is more respect and gentle decency in one paw of any animal I have ever known than in the whole bodies of some human beings I’ve had the displeasure to meet.
Dramatic but true.
I know some people would not understand that.
If I’ve been late with a meal occasionally or couldn’t go for a walk because I was ill or whatever… There’s absolutely no punishment for it!
And when an animal comes to you it is without an agenda it’s true raw connection.
And it’s the innocence.
It is the truth in them.
It is the lack of a filthy agenda.
This is priceless.
I find it a true honour to care for my dog’s.
Maybe some people wouldn’t understand that dramatic statement as saying it is an honour.
But that is the way I feel that in this universe my path has crossed with these creatures. And it has become so that I am responsible for their well-being and I find that humbling.
I feel the animals are a gift.
I found my dog wandering in the streets thin and bony… That’s my large dog.
I went through the correct official channels in order to be able to legally keep her.
I could not rest until the time frame of 7 Days had passed and I was able to go down to the rescue centre where I’d had to take her and where I had visited her daily in order to take full ownership of her.
I bought her a really good warm dog coat to make up for some of the lack of hair she had …a lovely new collar and lead and I could not wait to walk out of there with her.
“I’ve got you now girl” I said.
“I’ve got you”
this is really dramatic and ridiculous but when I closed my front door I turned round to the world and give it the finger. Umm I know! But I actually did it.
I locked my door top bottom and middle and said silently “fuck you” to the ether for anybody that did things that were wrong and nasty to hurt innocent things creatures ..children.
And she was away from the scum that had not cared for her.. (through the chip that existed it was known who had owned her previously.)
I prayed and prayed this person would not come back for her during the legal time frame.
It was not long before Christmas and it was absolutely freezing out Frost constantly on the ground all I could think about was her in the concrete enclosure and her poor bones only newspaper to rest on the hard concrete. The enclosures at this particular centre are bleak and cold..so relieved to get out of there as well.
So technically safe it’s meagre place.
She is the sweetest most gentle soul.
Completely unassuming.
Her fur is thick and beautiful now..
We had to go through some veterinary treatment which cost an arm and a leg,.lot of good nursing and tlc was required here. For animals it is something I can do in my sleep.
It isn’t an effort … isn’t hard it’s the easiest thing I could ever undertake just because I love them.
I love all animals and I’ve got this weird thing where I almost think they all belong to me!!!
Anyway don’t get me started haha.
I also had to pay for her to bring her back out of the rescue centre.
Id have paid twice the amount.
Our paths crossed on that November night in the most unlikely of ways, but that’s another story..
🐾
*Pompeii* ??
Speaking into a voice app doing voice typing here.. That word comes up with in my long post about animals… I have no idea to what it refers!
Lol…I did check all the wording but I must have missed that.
just thought I’d better make that clear cos it sounds very odd when you read it!!
Completely bizarre.🙄
Seriously? You couldn’t even be nice to your grandmother?
*mega scorn*
I used to climb up high in a tree a sit for hours when I was a child too! Maybe I’m a narcissist ha ha. How I would love to be able to do that now, but my arms are not strong enough. Up the tree and off the grid. What a delight that would be!
Just work out your arms MB…
Off the grid is worth achieving!!
My mum was a tree climber and sitter too…. she was no narcissist. Only one of my parents was/is of that persuasion thank fuck
TT, I really should make that my goal. Not being strong enough to lift your own body weight does feel like a disability. I wish I enjoyed exercising. Maybe your mum climbed trees for peace from your narc dad!
Probably! They knew each other all mums life (she’s gone now) and we’re married quite young. She was awesome MB and I still miss her after 20+ years. She died young. Mum protected my brother and myself from dad. Of course she bore the brunt of a lot his shit. Though dad was easy to avoid…. i learnt that tactic at 6. After he fleeced me with a rope for banging my desk top too loudly. He did apologise afterwards but the damage was done. I didn’t trust him and steered well clear of him. The golden child took any free time he had and we were glad! Dad played a minor role in my childhood. I had many other relatives who loved and cared for me… whew!
People have always told me about a stare I apparently have, even my narc mom would chuckle and say, If looks could kill.. Come to think of it my narc boss chuckled over it recently, glancing up twice at my glare, and gave into it saying, Look at you! ok, since it’s for you. I’ve never practiced it, it just comes naturally, lol.
HG, did you ever tell anyone the truth after you all were grown? Just for laughs, reminiscing.
No.
kelfairly,
My narc used to tell me the same thing…”What is this look on your face?” And he’d make a mock sneer. And I’d say that I don’t look like that…but it was exactly how he looked at times when he make accusations of me…I think that he was projecting.. I did glare at him sometimes but I think it was mostly because he drove me to it.