A Single Tear Drips off a Prepubescent Moustache

Erielle is in a horrid mood today. She yelled at some students at school this morning, and she didn't yell quietly. The two children (well, one of them has a moustache so it is doubtful whether or not he can be considered a child) were not doing anything intentionally malicious, thus, the remainder of the class is now terrified of their crazy teacher.

Now safely locked in her office, Erielle is disappointed in her irrational anger, which tends to surface randomly and cannot be suppressed. Still fuming, she plans to squelch her lingering fury by checking out the newest German porn sites during her planning time. To hell with the censors on the school computers. Let them come and get her and cart her away.

On second thought, Erielle decides she is not interested in porn sites today, and will instead eat the entire plate of chocolate cherry cookies that she made especially for her students but too bad for them they’re a bunch of jerks and they’re not going to get any.


In the event that the consumption of these cookies does not diminish Erielle’s angst, please list further anxiety-relieving procedures that come to your minds, preferably those that can be followed within the confines of a windowless cube that is engulfed by the cacophony of a seventh grade band that is playing the same song that the seventh grade band has been playing every single goddamnit year for the five years of Erielle’s short-lived career as a mean middle school orchestra director who makes pre-teens cry.

Optional objects or mediums available in windowless cube for anxiety-relieving procedures:
-random, broken, inexpensive musical instruments that sound like crap
-the internet
-a scanner
-a toolbox
-lunch
-a co-worker's lunch
-a grizzly bear costume
-a stop sign
-a bottle of ibuprofen and about 140 bandaids
-$8.36 in ones and change
-two unopened tubes of Krazy Glue


(Events in this dramatization have been modified. Erielle has not made any students cry for at least 1.5 years, and she doesn’t visit German porn sites. She does, however, have students with prepubescent moustaches, and prepubescent moustaches gross her out, so she likes those students less. They don’t get any cookies.)



Chocolate Cherry Cookies
from Cooking Light

The cocoa powder gives these cookies a wonderfully strong chocolate flavor, and the dried cherries give each bite a fruity tang. There is not even a full stick of butter in the recipe, and only on egg, but somehow the cookies turn out chewy and moist with a crunchy outside. What more can you want from cookie?

1 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder (I used Shaffern-Berger, the good stuff, but if you’re making it for ungrateful middle school students who don’t know how to behave, just use Hershey’s cocoa powder)
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt

1/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg


2/3 cup dried cherries (I use a cup)
3 tbs. chocoloate chips (surprise, I use about 6 tbs.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small bowl, combine the dry ingredients and whisk until combined.

In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar.
Add the egg and the vanilla and mix until blended.

Gradually add the dry ingredients, scraping down the side of the bowl to incorporate all of the batter.

Fold in the chips and the cherries.

Scoop tablespoons of batter onto a greased baking sheet.
Bake for 12 minutes, then let cookies sit on baking sheet for an additional 5 minutes. They will not look done when they come out of the oven, but they will continue to cook on the baking sheet.