Cookies and Courage

It's cookie day!  I recently found three great cookies at Sugar Bakery (Roslindale and West Roxbury, Massachusetts).  The Snickerdoodle, Trailblazer, and Lots O Chip were all good choices and did not disappoint.

The Snickerdoodle was a soft and buttery cookie topped with a perfect balance of cinnamon and sugar.  The combination of sugar and cinnamon was just right, and the texture of the sugary topping was delicate and light, a perfect accompaniment to the cookie underneath.  The cookie itself was cooked to perfection; just soft enough to be chewy, allowing for the buttery flavor to shine through.

The Trailblazer cookie featured a mixture of oats, cranberries, chocolate chips, and almonds.  It reminded me of a trail mix bar, but much sweeter and less dense.  The cranberries were featured prominently in this cookie, with the almonds taking a supporting role.  The chocolate chips nicely counterbalanced the cranberries, with the oats pulling it all together.  A very pleasant cookie, less rich than the Snickerdoodle, presenting perhaps a healthier, but still tasty, cookie offering.

The Lots O Chip was my favorite Sugar Bakery cookie.  A twist on the traditional chocolate chip cookie, it had white chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips and butterscotch chips.  The cookie itself was a good consistency--chewy but not too soft.  The butterscotch was a welcome flavor addition amidst the contrasting white and milk chocolate, and it made the cookie interesting to the last bite.  As I am a big chocolate fan, I was pleasantly surprised at how much a little butterscotch can elevate a chocolate chip cookie experience.

As it is cookie day today, and 'C is for Cookie' (Thank you Cookie Monster), I wanted to share a story about courage.  C is also for Courage.

A middle school student wanted to participate in Day of Silence which was being held at school.  The purpose behind Day of Silence was to highlight the struggles that students face due to bullying because of sexual orientation. Wearing a particular color would enable students to stand up for LGBT students everywhere who feel silenced.  On the Day of Silence, students could wear blue to participate, or they could wear black and vow to stay silent for the entire day, to symbolically support those who are silenced.  Or, they could wear neither blue nor black and not participate at all.

The middle school student really wanted to participate, but was very conflicted about what color to wear.  You see, the student had historically been the subject of some careless and false gossip about sexual preference, based entirely upon false stereotypes.  The unfortunate gossip always hurt.

So what to do?  Wear blue or wear black?  Support the cause as a bystander, like most students, or really support the cause by wearing black and staying silent in tribute?  That's what the student really wanted to do, wear black. But what would the fallout be?  Would wearing black serve as a false confirmation to the gossips?  Would it start another round of false and careless rumors? Simply wearing blue would show support, and wouldn't that be enough? Because when you are twelve years old, how much do you really need to put yourself out there?  

Then again, twelve years old is a good time to show yourself and the world what you're really made of.  

A tough one indeed.

And on the Day of Silence, the student got up in the morning and put on a black shirt.  The student was one of only four seventh graders to wear black that day, and got to participate in a special breaking-the-silence ceremony with all of the students in the school who wore black.  The student left school feeling a part of something important, and feeling happy.  And nothing was 'confirmed' for the gossips, except for the fact that the student was a great kid, who really wanted to support a great cause, and did it courageously and proudly with some other great kids.

What a wonderful choice the student made.  What a courageous and caring choice, to disregard social backlash in order to follow one's heart and support others.

I hope someone gave that kid a cookie that day!  Have a great week.