Really Good

I gain weight just sitting here thinking about it. At this time of year for as many winters as I can remember, my family put together plates full of cookies and candy to pass out to our neighborhood and beyond. It was primarily the job of we boys to take these plates around, up and down the street and a couple around the block. We waited patiently at the kitchen counter as my mother carefully arranged our assortment of sweet treats on paper plates. Each one would be covered with plastic wrap, taped at the bottom, with a bow and a label, and the plates would be more or less full depending on how many cookie craving mouths lived in that particular house. We loaded up the wagon and headed out.
My family lived at the end of a cul de sac, and these Christmastime delivery trips were pretty systematic. We knew everyone on our street, and they knew us. The houses with kids were the easy ones. The little fiends would be waiting at the door, salivating. We knew that most of the yummies would be devoured before the plate every made it to the kitchen. That plastic wrap and bow may have been consumed along with the intended treats. It was the older folks we worried about a little. What if they don't want all that sugar? What if they're mean to us? What if they slam the door in our faces? You kids get off of my porch!
That never happened. Everyone wanted my mom's Chocolate Crinkles and Snickerdoodles. Her green Divinity and Chocolate Chip cookies. But most of all, they wanted the fudge. And my father's peanut brittle. For all those years, when the snow and the temperature started to fall, the machinery started to wind up, and by the second or third week of December our laundry room would be full of various containers filled with what would eventually be disseminated to the neighborhood. It was a dangerous, horrible temptation. All that deliciousness with three boys left to stand guard? Better to put porcupines in charge of a balloon factory.
We sneaked our share of cookies and candy out of that politely controlled inventory. But I'm pretty sure that my mom knew there was a certain amount of loss. Acceptable loss.
Because we would earn it all back in those trips up and down the street. We were the delivery crew. And the quality control group. The taste testers. It was, as they say, all good. Really good.