The Danger of Chocolate Chip Cookies

The Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah provides structure to young missionaries from all over the world. It is a place of tight schedules and intensive training. I personally experienced more growth in the month I trained there than during any other time of my life, but I also had an experience outside of the classroom at the MTC that taught me the danger of chocolate chip cookies.

One day an elder in my district received a package of the hardest homemade chocolate chip cookies in the history of man. Rather than chip his teeth on the cookies, he decided to have a little fun and threw one of the cookies down the hall (imagine someone skipping a rock on water and you can visualize the throwing motion it takes to zip a cookie through the air with some serious velocity). The cookie eventually smashed into a brick wall, crumbling into several smaller pieces and leaving a remnant of itself about the size of a dime on the brick wall.

We had never seen anything like it. More cookies followed. Without any real planning or discussion a kind of cookie war broke out. I zipped one of the cookies down the hallway with impressive velocity just as an elder jumped from behind a doorway. The cookie hit him square in the lip!

For a moment, time stood still. Then Elder Fatlip got this look of rage on his face as he ignored the other cookies flying through the air and came running directly at me. I did the smart thing and locked myself in my room until the young man calmed down. I believe that sometime after the incident we both apologized to each other. But that is when I learned what I already should have intuitively known, that it is just not right to throw chocolate chip cookies in the direction of other people.

***The photos shown in this post are for illustrative purposes only and are not originals from this event.***