The Day I Met Cookie Monster

This was written in a class where the prompt was "just bully someone".

The Day I Met Cookie Monster

Galen Ng

To say Mr. Rosenstein was overweight was like calling the Milky Way galaxy big.  Sure, the statement is true, but it does not accurately capture the sheer magnitude of the concept.  His most notable feature was his gargantuan-sized belly.  If one were to juxtapose him and a pregnant lady of the same stature, the only difference would be his unkempt facial hair.  I would often entertain myself during woodworking class by imagining how many jelly beans would fit in his belly.  This was my own perverse version of the challenge of guessing how many jelly beans were in a mason jar.  My estimates were that he could fit the whole Jelly Belly production line in his gut.  There were times when honestly, I was surprised Mr. Rosenstein didn’t have his own gravitational orbit.  He was large, but I had to give him some credit.  For such a large man, he was quite agile.  I remember him quickly flopping out of his chair one time to lock the woodshop door in front of a tardy student.  That student was already on academic probation and dropped out the next week.  Mr. Rosenstein said he fed on the fear in students’ eyes.

My first encounter was in senior year.  As a clarinetist, I was not required to take a “practical work elective” as the school called it.  I assumed the Stuyvesant High School administration figured that if you had stuck with music for this long, you were beyond saving and were not worth the man hours involved in teaching you useful skills.  However, I figured since I planned to get a steady paying job and to pursue engineering, woodworking would be a worthwhile course.  And so I began learning the art of woodworking from the big friendly giant.  For some reason, all woodworking and technical drafting classrooms were relegated to seclusion on the tenth floor of our towering high school building.  It was a dismal floor with not enough light.  There were plenty of light bulbs on that floor but the school had to save money on electricity after a senior prank gone awry caused many alumni donors to forsake their alma mater.  All other floors of my high school had interesting aspects to them, such as cubes in the walls filled with memorabilia of previous graduating classes, an extensive collection of rainforest plants, championship banners for sports and math (it was a school of athletic nerds), and murals.  The tenth floor had some windows so you wouldn’t go insane, but that was its only redeeming quality. 

On the first day of senior year, I hiked up those ten flights of stairs (the escalators were broken at least 364 days a year) with my shirt tucked in, my spectacles prominently worn on my face, and my head held high.  From behind, a dark shadow loomed over me, blotting out any light shining from the single working light bulb on the forsaken tenth floor.

            “Did you bring a cookie for me?” He said, in a surprisingly high voice. 

            “Uh, n-no sir, sorry,” I stammered.  He had an intimidating presence, but his tonality threw me off balance.  I expected a smoker’s voice, but this guy sounded like he could voice a fairy in a kids’ TV show.

            He sighed, “I guess you’re going to repeat senior year.”

I thought it was a joke but as the semester wore on, I believed it more and more.  Every day he’d hobble in, causing tremors with each step, and he’d ask, “So does anyone have a cookie for me?”

            No one would, and he’d proceed to passive aggressively make every student feel incompetent at woodworking.  These would be little quips here and there.  One student’s stool was “stupid-looking” and another student’s bowl looked like “a hat for the homeless.”

For our final projects, one student wished to make a dovetail chair.  Mr. Rosenstein said if he couldn’t sit on it without breaking it, the student would fail.  Another student attempted a desk organizer; Mr. Rosenstein said it would have to pass an impact test.  I designed a structural block with the intent that it would withstand most standardized demolitions tests and tried to pass it off as a shelf.  He bought it.

            I didn’t want to trust my structural block to withstand Mr. Rosenstein’s weight or whatever else he might throw my way, so I tried to seek solace by asking one of my friends who had graduated the year before about Mr. Rosenstein.  He was studying at Harvard, so I figured he must have found a way to conquer this teacher.

            Our messages over the now-deceased messenger program AOL went like this:

Itsgallon:

Hey, Jack!  What’s poppin?  How’s college life?

Buttercupcakes17:

Galennnn!! I LOVE COLLEGE IM HAVIN SO MUCH WILD, UNPROTECTED SEX AND GETTING DRUNK ALLL THE TIMEEE!!  What’s Gucci with you?  Can I help you with anything?

Itsgallon:

Lol, that doesn’t sound safe… anyways yea, I was wondering if you could tell me about Mr. Rosenstein and how to make it through his class.

Buttercupcakes17:

Ooo, that behemoth of a man is still alive?  Thought he would have dropped dead from a clogged artery by now.  Well, anyways heed my advice, young padawan.  Get him the damn cookie he keeps droning on about.  However, there is a catch.  Certain cookies have certain outcomes on your grade.  He hates oatmeal raisin.  I mean can you blame him?

Itsgallon:

Nah, I hate oatmeal raisin, too. 

Buttercupcakes17:

Exactly, that’s why after past failures of students attempting to please the man’s palette I discovered the cookie that would make him ecstatic.  It has to be a chocolate fudge twirl cookie from Terry’s Deli.  If you want above a 90 in that class, you need that cookie.  All my buddies and I took the shotgun approach and got different cookies from all sorts of brand names.  They all got in the 70’s and 80’s, but I got lucky.  Heh, I guess that’s why I’m at Harvard :P

Itsgallon:

Wow, okay.  I’ll try that one.  Does it really have to be that specific cookie?

Buttercupcakes17:

Dude, trust me.  What school did I just say I go to?

Itsgallon:

Harvard…

Buttercupcakes17:

Yea, that’s right.  And that means my word is f*****g gold.  Lol gtg now, my roommate just got stuck in the ceiling fan.  You’re gonna love college.  Just make sure you pick a place with a decent gender ratio. Peace out!

            The last day of the semester came and I feared for my academic career.  My girlfriend at the time tried to motivate me by saying something along the lines of, “I only date winners and if you fail, I’m breaking up with you.  Also, I’ll take all your friends.”  I was surprised I made it to woodworking class without throwing up on the way. 

            I entered the classroom and there was Mr. Rosenstein, looking like an overstuffed beanbag on a thumbtack spilling over the edges of the stool on which he sat.  If his stool could express facial emotions, I imagine it would be looks of agony and self-loathing.  My classmate, Andre, brought his dovetail chair over.  He looked petrified.  Mr. Rosenstein moved to the pathetic looking chair.  It was like a Mexican stand-off: Mr. Rosenstein and the wooden structure.  He sat down. The chair cracked down the middle, exhaling its last breath in a sigh of defeat.

            “Fail,” He said.

            I patted the secret weapon concealed in my breast pocket.  My name was called.  I stepped forward and reached into my sweater.

            “Did you bring me a cookie?” He asked, already expecting the answer.

            But I was ready to surprise him.  I planned on passing this class and moving on to second semester senior year.  I planned on a long life of success: a stable job, fancy vacations, a comfortable house, a loving wife, kids.  All my aspirations would be meaningless if I didn’t make it through this obstacle before me, but I was determined to vanquish this foe.  I unsheathed the cookie from my pocket and handed him the chocolate fudge twirl treat with the plastic wrap partially undone to expose the glistening chocolate.

            Mr. Rosenstein’s eyes lit up as quickly as a pile of dry lint near an open flame.  I had never before seen someone inhale a cookie as quickly as that man did.  In one swift motion, the cookie vanished into his gullet.  He could make a shop vacuum blush in insecurity.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t even chew.  But that didn’t matter; my future was in his hands.

            “You pass,” he mumbled with a smile, crumbs falling from his mouth.

Author's Note

Please hit me with any constructive criticism.