How to Not Get Your Cookie

Isaac Turner

Eng 111-05

Professor Kendrick

10/21/09

How to Not Get Your Cookie

Have you ever wanted to not have your way with something, but simply didn’t know how to go about it? Here is a step-by-step process that will teach you how to never let this happen to you again. To show you the best technique for not having your way, we will use the example of making cookies with your sister.

Firstly, you and your sister make the decision to bake some cookies. You’re making excellent progress so far, seeing as you didn’t want to make cookies in the first place. The next step is to get out the ingredients and gather a bowl, a spoon, a pan, etc. Afterwards, your sister starts to add the ingredients together, but just before she’s about to crack the eggs into the bowl, she stops. She then asks if you would like to do the eggs, and without hesitation you grab the eggs and proceed to break them into the mixture. This is an important part in the procedure, for you absolutely detest the feel of egg on your hands, and you know that you can never seem to crack an egg without getting some of that slimy goop on you. Make sure that you don’t wash your hands, or else you will have to start the whole process over again from the beginning.

Once the dough is finished being mixed, it will be time to dollop the cookies onto a pan to put in the oven. Your sister stalls you, however, and progresses to rummage in the pantry. Finding what she was looking for, she shows you a bag of walnuts. She chops some of these up and mixes them into the cookie dough. As your sister starts to spoon the dough onto the pan, let a smile of success creep onto your face; you’re allergic to walnuts.

About ten minutes later the timer on the oven goes off. Your sister takes the cookies out and lays them out to cool. But she doesn’t even wait. She grabs one of the cookies before the pan even touches the potholder on the counter and she stuffs it in your mouth. As your eyes start to water and the cookie slowly burns your taste buds away, you might desperately want to chug a glass of cold milk. But now is not the time for giving up. You’ve gotten this far and it would be an awful shame to have all your work be for nothing. At this point, your sister may be looking at you as if you had a third eye; she’s wondering why you’re letting her do these things to you. Before the rest of the cookies have time to cool, she feeds them to you. Eat every last one of them, and no matter what, don’t tell your sister that you’ve had enough. Around this point in time, your allergic reaction to the walnuts ensues in the form a massive migraine. Your sister picks up the bottle of ibuprofen and, for some reason, throws it in the trash. Don’t ask her why, and don’t complain that you needed those pills for your headache. You should now feel utterly depressed and lethargic from eating roughly twenty cookies in a row, but you can’t help but grin, because you are quite successfully not getting your way with anything today.

Suddenly, you feel like your going to be sick. You start to walk toward the bathroom, but your sister beats you to it. Before she shuts the door she asks if you mind that she goes before you. Tell her that you don’t mind. As she closes the door behind herself, you start to gag over the sink. Three minutes later, you feel slightly better. Your sister comes out of the bathroom and starts to clean up the mess that was made from making cookies. Before she gets too involved in this process, however, she turns around and asks you if you would like to clean up everything. Smile and say something like, “Of course. I would love to.” Stand at the sink doing dishes for the next hour or so, and when you finish, don’t try to stay away from your sister for the rest of the day.

And you are done. You have sufficiently not had your way. You have hopefully learned that the key to not getting your way is to simply not say what you really want and to always let other people have their way with things, no matter what.