The year was 1982. We danced to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album and watched “E.T.” on the silver screen. John Belushi died and Prince William was born. We exercised to Jane Fonda video tapes and never missed watching “Dynasty” on TV. Gas cost 91 cents a gallon and a stamp two dimes. We were spooked by the Tylenol scare and held our breath as the recession began.
It was a year of promise and pain, of sweetness and sorrow.
But it was OUR year.
We were the Class of 1982, and we were ready to take on the world.
Cookie (Yearbook post/1982)
Gina, you’re a crazy, crazy girl and we shared so many laughs together this year. I’ll miss ya next year. I’m sure you’ll be a success and I’ll try to keep in touch. Love, Cookie
3/23/12
Funny that Amy – we called her Cookie – thought I was crazy. She was the crazy one. What I liked most about her is that she blazed her own path. Some days, she’d come to school dressed in the wackiest stuff, liked multicolored striped socks with a houndstooth skirt and stripped shirt. It would look totally ridiculous on me, but on Cookie, it looked perfect.
I admired her for her spirit, and I always wished I could be more like her. Cookie never worried about what others thought of her. She was comfortable in her skin. And confident. Some of my girlfriends made fun of Cookie. But I think deep inside they wished they could be more like her.
It didn’t surprise me when Mom sent me a newspaper clipping about a local school district banning some books for sexually explicit content and offensive language and violence. Leading the opposition to the ban was Cookie.
“Where does the censorship end?” she was quoted as saying in the newspaper article."
That was Cookie. Always standing up for what she believed in, even if was the unpopular thing to do.
Mom asked me how Amy got the nickname Cookie. It started in first grade. She always brought her lunch and every day it included Oreo cookies. So we started to call her Cookie.
Some days, if she wasn’t really hungry, she'd auction off her cookies. I learned to always have a nickel or two in my pocket just in case.
Cookie’s the one who taught me how to eat Oreos to get the most out of them. She’d pull the cookie apart, scrap the crème off with her two front teeth and then eat the chocolate wafers. I asked her once why she didn’t lick off the icing. She said it made her tongue tired, especially if they were double-stuffed.
Robby, who always sat with us at lunch, ate his cookie whole. He liked to taste everything together. She told him she thought that was lame. That eating Oreos wasn’t something to be rushed, but enjoyed.
Funny the things you remember. I hadn’t thought about our Oreo eating in decades.
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