The Road to Hell is Paved With No-Bake Cookies

I got together with 5 women I went to college with. Last Saturday we holed up in a suite in an Indianapolis hotel and talked till our tongues fell out of our mouths and slithered off into a corner to sleep like a pile of contented slugs.

Wait. I forgot the exciting part. Just as we were really winding down around 1 a.m., there was the loudest fire alarm in the history of the middle ear. We got to go stand outside in our various styles of pajamas for 45 minutes. Well, mostly we were in Suzanne's Jeep. I rammed a seat belt into my butt cheek so hard that it made my nose run. (That was Saturday night. Even now I still have a deep purple plum-sized bruise on my right cheek that looks like I've been on a date with Mike Tyson and a wallaby.)

What does any of this have to do with no-bake cookies? Nothing. Nothing at all. It has to do with brownies. Suzanne's brownies. Although she saved my pals and I from the elements by housing us in her Jeep (the only one smart enough to bring her keys outside), she tried to kill me with the brownies she brought to the reunion. I hadn't seen brownies in a very long time. Having done my best to avoid such things, I tranced out like a Scientologist when she opened the Tupperware with the delectable brownies inside. It was like I was a lifer in the big house, and suddenly I was getting a conjugal visit with the Rockettes.

Over the course of the evening, I ate five brownies. I knew that my blood sugar was crazy high. I knew that my behavior was not exactly aiming in the direction of self-preservation. I willingly jumped off the effing wagon and let the wheels roll over me.

I'm back on the wagon now, and fondly reminiscing about those 5 brownies. And about those 5 women. I love every one of them. You rarely make friends ever again like the chicks you brushed your teeth next to in the dorm bathroom.

One of us is getting married soon, one of us got married a year ago. One of us needs a hip replacement, one of us just adopted a Russian baby girl. One of us is a professional computer geek. One of us will retire in 2 years. All of us were talking about health problems and realized that we'd probably talk more about those every year. I don't want to be talking about high blood sugar this time next year. I want to be talking about the new acrobatically challenging sex acts in my life.

Gotta go string up the trapeze.