It was 10:30 AM – break time at the office. The five of us sat around a large round table in the cafeteria – Fred, Pete, Rick, myself, and Harold. Harold was a portly man in his early to mid-fifties and balding except for a bit of gray around the temples.

Harold was a somewhat dissolute character. He had an insatiable appetite, especially for desserts and sweets of any kind. He would invariably devour a donut in two quick bites and wash it down with a gulp of coffee before lighting up a cigarette.

One morning, Harold told us a story from his youth.

"I must have been in the third or maybe the fourth grade. Anyway, if you're familiar with the old St. Mary School, you know the playground was entirely paved."

"Yes!" I briefly interrupted. "I went to school there too. Uh... a few years later than you did, of course."

"Of course. Well, as I was saying, you might also know that there was a big commercial bakery next to the school. They baked cookies, cupcakes, donuts – you name it – for all the markets in the area, probably, for the entire northeast."

"You're talking about Hostess, right?" asked Fred.

"Yes," continued Harold. "Now, the only thing that separated the school playground from the bakery parking lot was a chain-link fence, which coincidently had a gaping hole behind some bushes in the back corner."

"Gee, what a coincidence," Rick said with a touch of sarcasm.

Harold continued. "So, one morning, the bakery was in flames. One of the ovens had overheated. The employees frantically moved the baked goods out of the adjacent but unattached warehouse in case it caught fire, stacking them on pallets in the parking lot for loading onto a tractor-trailer. It was a beautiful sight – piles of donuts, Twinkies, pies, and cupcakes."

"I think I see where this is going, and it doesn't look good," predicted Fred.

"Ah! Right you are, my friend!" laughed Harold. But I'm getting there. So, me and my buddy sneaked through the 'secret' opening in the fence to the Hostess parking lot. We had to be careful. We didn't want anyone to see us, especially one of our teachers. We'd have been dead for sure if one of the nuns caught us."

All this time, as Harold tells his story, I'm visualizing him as a chubby child version of his adult self.

"We hid behind one of the pallets. Then, I made my move – I grabbed a case of chocolate cupcakes – a big case, mind you, not the small box you buy in the store. There must have been about sixty cupcakes in that box. My buddy managed to swipe a case of Twinkies. And together, we chowed down in the corner behind the bushes. I must have eaten a half dozen cupcakes and almost as many Twinkies as we shared our loot."

"Then what?" asked Pete.

"That night, I was so sick, I puked in my sleep, dreaming about what happened."

Story and Cover Illustration Copyright © 2024 by Michael DeFrancesco