Twinkie Quest (10-5-09)

On Friday night, my wife and I left the kids with a sitter and traveled to Hays. While there, we decided to catch a show, and chose Zombieland. Now you might wonder what a grade school principal is doing going to see such a movie, but please remember I wasn’t born a grade school principal. Sometimes I like to see movies without the kids, and as Saturday night held the promise of kid friendly Toy Story and Toy Story II, Friday night we chose the R-rated zombie movie.

To our delight, the movie was not only funny, but also incredibly warm-hearted. Afterwards, my wife and I agreed that it was “the feel good movie of the year!”

As with any great movie, the strength of Zombieland is found in the characters. The main character is an introverted college kid who survives by his wits and his general distrust of all people, zombie or not. He becomes obsessed with creating rules for survival and the longer he lives, the longer his list becomes.

Then this loner kid meets a man who not only survives, but actually enjoys the ride. Before the virus, he was an average guy, but now he is a zombie killer deluxe. While the loner lives by dozens of rules to carefully and meticulously survive, the man lives by only one: “Enjoy the little things.”

Still with me? I do have a point to all this. The man, while relieving the undead of the “un” part, is in search of one simple confectionary delight: Twinkies. He tells the loner kid, “Twinkies have an expiration date. One day soon, the Twinkie gauge will be riding on empty, forever.”

It makes for an enjoyable distraction, and by the end of the film, you are really pulling for this guy to get his Twinkie.

After the movie, I reminisced. When I was a kid, my mom made me a sack lunch everyday, and more often than not I either had a Twinkie or a Ho Ho waiting for me in my blue plastic lunch box. Talking about Twinkies, made me realize that it had been years since my last Twinkie or Ho Ho. My wife then commented that our children had probably NEVER had a Twinkie.

Now, while this might not be a global emergency (unlike a zombie virus), I was still a bit shocked. Our children needed to have a Twinkie. If just once in their lives, by God, they needed to experience the savory sweet creamy yellow cake preservative filled delight that is an American snack food tradition! Okay, sometimes I can get a little worked up.

So the next day, I set out on a Twinkie Quest. First, to Dollar General, finding Little Debbie snack cakes, but no Twinkies. Then to IGA. Again, Little Debbie, but no Twinkies. The quest continued to Casey’s General Store. You guessed it, a mostly empty rack reserved for Little Debbie, but nothing even slightly resembling a Hostess product.

At that point, I realized that Hostess must contract with different stores, and they probably have some kind of competition clause, like Pepsi and Coke. Maybe Little Debbie outlets can’t get Hostess products. Maybe Hostess doesn’t serve Northwest Kansas. Apparently, my family lives in a veritable Twinkie “dead zone.”

The quest ended at Cameron’s. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed, on an otherwise empty counter, a single package of two cream-filled oblong yellow cakes. They weren’t exactly Twinkies (they were an off brand and I don’t remember the name) but they looked exactly like Twinkies. I felt like I had found the last Twinkies (albeit imitation Twinkies) on the face of the Earth.

We served them to the kids sliced like bananas, carefully rationing each bite. The kids liked them. Not loved them. Not the kind of love that only a daily dose in your lunch box can inspire. But for me, the food wasn’t as important as the lessons learned.

First, the adventure reminded me not to take things for granted. You never know when something, or someone, will suddenly become rare or non-existent.

Second, it brought home the message of a ridiculous, but highly enjoyable movie: Enjoy the little things. In the end, everything an expiration date.