Sugar Cookies

At my grade school, room mothers were assigned at the beginning of each year. A room mother was just the mom of one of the kids in the class. Generally, they were in charge of class parties. The unwary were tricked into driving their car with two or three children as passengers for the infrequent outings. 

When I was in the first grade my mom was initiated into that secret society when the other mom's managed to get all the ornery boys in her car. She still talks about having Ricky McKensie, the PK, preacher's kid, in her car.  I don't remember what he did to give her nightmares, but I clearly recall him slapping me once when I beat him at checkers during recess. It must have been bad weather that day because we usually played outside during recess. 

When my brother was in the third grade, mom and her best friend Valerie, were assigned the Valentine's Day party for his classroom of 3rd and 4th graders. That meant they had to bring the refreshments and think of a quiet game for the kids to play.  Actually, Valentine's and Christmas was sort of a free ride in the entertainment department because much of the party was spent exchanging Valentine's cards or modest gifts, respectively. 

A couple of days before the party we went to Valerie's house and played with her kids while she and my mom made sugar cookies. They made a huge batch of dough so there would be enough cookies for all the kids. However, they weren't satisfied with the way the dough turned out.

I don't know what was wrong with it. It was too dry and wouldn't roll out, or it was too sticky and they couldn't get it off the counter. From helping Mom cook as a ten-year-old, I sorta, kinda knew about stuff like that. I couldn't see anything wrong with it, but they threw it out. Being thrifty wives, they didn't just toss it in the garbage. They gave it to us kids to eat. Since there are hardly any ingredients in sugar cookies besides butter, sugar and flour it was safe to eat raw.

We got four spoons and proceeded to chow down on the dough while the moms made another party-sized batch. The four of us kids couldn't possibly have eaten all that dough, but I remember consuming more than my fair share.

The incident gave me a lifelong aversion to sugar cookies.