I had the funniest experience involving baked goods this afternoon.

I stopped at this little bakery on the way to a friend’s house, to pick up something sweet. Maybe coffee cake, I thought, or a pie. I had never been to this bakery before, but I’d driven past it about a million times, and it was right on my way so I thought I’d give it a try. I pulled into the parking lot, trudged through the snow, and opened the door.

The first thing I noticed was that it was a little small, and their selection was kind of picked over. Fine, I thought, it’s after lunch. Maybe things go fast around here because they’re THAT GOOD. So I stuck around, and peered into the pastry case. There wasn’t much in there, either. No coffee cake, no pies. But they did have cookies, and some ridiculously gigantic pretzels with tomato sauce on them.

A little tiny woman appeared from the back room, and asked, in quite broken English, if she could help me. I asked her if they had any sweets, like cake or anything, and she pointed to the cookies and said “This is it.”

“What are they?” I asked. “Chocolate chip?” They looked kind of fat for chocolate chip, but the light wasn’t very good and I’m no cookie aficionado.

She nodded.

“How much?” I asked, and she gave me a per-cookie price. “How much for a dozen?” I asked, and she gave me a price that added up to MORE than the per-cookie price. But I was in a hurry, and I”m a writer, not a mathematician, so I said fine, and she started to load me up with a dozen.

I paid for them, took the bag, and went back to my car. But before I left the parking lot, I thought maybe I’d try one of the cookies, just in case they were totally disgusting and I had to dump them out. So I picked up the little paper bag, and reached inside….

The cookies were raw.

I had bought a dozen blobs of cookie dough. They were cookie shaped and everything, and yes, they were chocolate chip, but they were uncooked.

I looked at the bag. I looked at the bakery. I could not go back inside and say “I don’t understand why you just sold me a dozen blobs of cookie dough. Can you explain why you don’t sell actual, baked cookies?” I could hardly take these to my friend as a treat, could I? She’d think I was a weirdo.

I had 20 minutes to ponder this situation as I drove up to her house, and another ten to think about it while I got myself turned around in her maze of suburban streets. And in the end, because I have known this person for 20 years, I decided to take the cookie dough inside and tell her the story. So that’s what I did, and we had a good laugh about it. And then we made the cookies, and watched her husband eat one. And when he survived, we ate one, too.

They were good. Thank goodness.