Commercialism Strikes Again

I was sitting in the TV Room of Main last night, watching Hell’s Kitchen and pretending to get work done at the same time when I felt a little rumbly in my tumbly. I looked at my cell phone. It was 10:48 pm. Time for a snack. The food supply in my room is running low, so I set off for the vending machines. I began to scan the rows… Skittles, Kettlecorn, ice cream bars. All seemed normal UNTIL I reached the very bottom row. There, to my amazement, were none other than NILDA’S COOKIES! I was astounded and also appalled. Nilda’s in the vending machine?! It must be a mistake. I blinked furiously, urging my eyes to refocus and reveal that what I had thought were Nilda’s were in fact Milan Cookies. To my disappointment, there remained the neatly packaged Nilda’s Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip cookies.

Okay, so by this point you may be wondering why in the world I am so very upset by Nilda’s in vending machines. Well to be honest, it furthers shatters my vision of Nilda. You see, in the beginning of the year I was missing very much the home baked cookies that my mom makes. Around that time discovered Nilda’s. They were each wrapped in their own plastic wrap, with a hand cut looking piece of paper. I was in love. In my mind, Nilda was a kind little grandmother who mixed each batch of cookies by hand and offered them to Vassar students to assuage their craving for homebaked goods. Then a few months later, they began to come in factory-like packaging. This was the beginning of the crumble of my vision of Nilda. And now this!? I just don’t know that I can handle it. So instead I will continue in denial… in fact, maybe I'll go visit Nilda. We'll talk and she offered me hot cookies out of the oven and hot cocoa. We'll sit in rockers on her front porch and she'll tell me stories of growing up... Yes. That is the Nilda I'd like to know.

SGPG