The Contested Cookie

Tiffany and I split everything right down the middle. Bills, chores, meals we share at restaurants, and, as it turns out, cookies.

Our evenhandedness is annoying sometimes. To other people and, quite frankly, to us. Sometimes we each order one thing and go half-and-half. Or, if we're not too hungry, we'll share one thing. We pass our plates back and forth, splitting a piece of cake or an omelet or an order of pancakes bite by bite until it's impossible to split the bite any further:

"You take it," I say, pushing the plate back to Tiffany's side.

"I couldn't possibly," Tiffany replies, politely shoving it back to me.

"No, seriously, babe, it's yours."

At which point our fellow diners begin to give us dirty looks and, finally, one of us becomes so irritated by the other's generousity that we stab the piece with our fork:

"Mmmm, great, thanks... check please!"

Once Tiffany and I passed an apple back and forth after my good family friend Brett picked us up at the airport for the Thanksgiving holiday. He raised his eyebrow at us.

"Want a bite?" I asked, thinking he was hungry.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Are you really sharing an apple? You couldn't each eat your own?"

Our opposite-sex couple friends tell us this sharing does not fly in their relationships because the men unconsciously eat more than their fair share. I've seen wives elbow husbands out of their plate-zone before.

The other night Tiffany and I baked four tiny cookies (this is a simple mind-trick--who wants to eat just one cookie? And yet, who wants to feel guilty about eating more than one? We make two that add up to one, problem solved.). I put them on a plate between us while we searched for affordable flights to see our families. Distracted, we lost track of our cookie count. At one point, we both reached down for the remaining cookie.

"Oh!" I said. "Is that yours?"

"Did I eat two?" Tiffany asked. "I don't think so."

"I don't think I did either," I said, not willing to relinquish my claim to the last tiny cookie either.

"Maybe I did..." we both said, speaking over reach other. "You take it."

Would you believe that cookie sat there uneaten while we both stubbornly refused to eat it out of the goodness of our hearts?

Well, for about 10 minutes anyway. After that amount of time, I considered the cookie totally fair game and ate it.*

*The pictured cookie is not one of our homemade tiny cookies. It is one of the cookies that came in a package that came in one of the baskets the E.B. left us last weekend.