Was God Playing a Joke on Us?

A True Brownie Story

Brownie. Brownies. Chocolate goodness. Everyone in my family loves chocolate. Dark Chocolate, semi sweet chocolate, chocolate dipped bacon, chocolate dipped chocolate. Everyone loved chocolate but me. Brownies are the epitome of chocolate so of course they were made very regularly at my house growing up and they always make me think of my sister Ellen. Ellen, who still loves chocolate, loves brownies and always baked them. I’d eat them of course, I mean, they’re sweet! I’d rather have had some sort of non chocolate dessert but they were fine. I didn’t really have a choice. Ellen never believed that I didn’t like chocolate. I’m not sure my mother did either but I was not a fan. I’m not sure if Ellen just couldn’t wrap her mind around it or if she really thought I was trying to pull wool over her eyes but in all seriousness….I was NOT a chocolate fan as a child. Not a fan. So this is a story about a brownie disaster involving my sister Ellen. I can giggle about it now but at the time I thought I was in a heap of trouble. I promised my mother I’d blog about this story so here it goes.

It was summer time and the East Texas heat was killer. It was one of those days where you could see the heat coming off of the pavement in waves that made everything look blurry in the distance. We had a huge house with 2 AC unit and my parents, who I believe were trying to get us not to watch too much TV, didn’t like turning the AC on in the part of the house that had the TV in it so instead of sweating our poor little tails off watching TV we always decided to swim first, then bake, and finally partake in our yummy goodness. Mama had a strict schedule back in the day. She’d start in the morning with breakfast and then clean from room to room. The kitchen was usually the first thing to get cleaned then the floors so once those things were taken care of you better not screw it up with dirty feet or dishes. Mama had dropped us off at the pool that morning then picked us up and what did Ellen want to make? Of course, brownies.

Mama had already cleaned, I mean sheesh, she had probably been cleaning the whole time we were lounging at the pool and I’m pretty positive she didn’t want two girls in her kitchen messing things all up and getting things dirty again. But we asked, kind of begged for a little bit and finally mama said something to the extent of , “listen, I’ve cleaned the floors and kitchen already so if you mess it up I’ll be upset”. That’s all she had to say, we knew we had to be careful in that kitchen! So we got home and got our things together for the kitchen. Eggs, check. Oil, check. Water, yup. Box of chocolate brownie mix, check. Since I hated brownies I was positive that Ellen would let me enjoy the one fun part of the brownie baking process, pouring in the mix. I’m not sure why it was so exciting but I guess when you’re twelve those things can really rile you up. Ellen gave me her well practiced “hell no” face and then the sass came out. She snatched up that brownie mix bag then I snatched it back. We were crazy. After about ten seconds of pulling back and forth, fighting over who was going to do the ever so important “brownie mix pour” the darn bag split open and brownie mix soared all over my mother’s pristine kitchen counters, floors and daughters.

For a moment I felt like it was the end of the world. My mother’s floors? She just told us to be careful about the stupid floors and of all things, brownie mix? Was God playing a joke on us? We didn’t even have a plan of action here, all hope had been lost. The white flag had been drawn and I could see mama coming through the fire place room to our kitchen. The time had come. She came into the kitchen and saw the floors and the counters and started laughing at us. Really? You’re going to laugh at us? I was completely confused. First of all my sister and I were arguing which didn’t bode well in our home. Secondly, we were in her kitchen making food she told us to be careful about making. Lastly, we had failed at those directions. So, why was she laughing? I guess now that I’m a mom I understand. She wasn’t really laughing out of nervousness or anxiety. She was laughing at us. We looked like idiots and she knew that we were so scared out of our pants for making a huge mess and she knew that the kitchen would be cleaner than before after we were finished. I love my mom for laughing at us. She could have done much worse. We baked more brownies that day. My sister, mother and I enjoyed them very much.