Description:
Side if a cardboard box with logo for The Original Cookie Co, from a box large enough to hold a large pizza sized cookie. There is a bit of soot damage.
Story:
Mr. Gaba. My Mr. Gaba, when were were dating, lived and worked at home in Milwaukee during the summers while I lived and worked on campus at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon. The thing was he didn’t have a car and neither did I. So for us to visit each other he would take a Milwaukee County Transit bus as far has he could and then walk a few miles into Ozaukee County to visit me. (In those days there were no buses going into Ozaukee county let alone any routs that would take you to campus) He liked to bring me gifts: Candy, flowers, the usual guy wooing a girl things. On one hot Friday night I knew he planned to visit, so I and sat out in a common area on a Friday until he showed up. (Concordia has set hours for when you can visit the room of someone of the opposite sex) I sat in a little alcove area where a few dorms intersected that had stairs and a desk and some dying plants that we called “the jungle” After 11:00 pm on Friday he came carrying what I thought looked like a pizza box. I remember thinking “Oh, that’s nice. I could go for a slice of pizza.” But it was not a pizza. It was a large pizza sized heart shaped chocolate chip cookie--really two cookies; a cookie cream filled sandwich, that was decorated with chocolate frosting around it's top edge and inside that border in cursive frosting it read “I love you.” It was a lot of cookie.
I asked if he had eaten supper. He had not, so I offered to share some of the cookie and he said, “No, it’s all for you” It was a lot of cookie. The cream filling was quite sweet. I only had a friend or two living on campus that summer and not wanting to waste it and knowing it would get stale in my tiny unairconditioned dorm room that only had a cube fridge with a footprint the same size as the cookie box, I took most of it to the campus library where I worked, and shared it with the staff. They teased me. One fellow student worker was a senior business student named Charlie and he would laugh at me every time I came in the library office and say in a sickly sweet voice “I love you.” I’d laugh, blush, and get what I needed and head back to the stacks.
Latif was surprised that I kept that bit of the box all these years. He bought it at the Original Cookie store in the now defunct North Ridge Mall on Brown Deer Road and from there he walked to campus. That's about 9 miles. Google says it would take 2 hours and 53 minutes to walk (perhaps a bit longer walking in the heat while carrying a large pizza sized cookie sandwich). No wonder he got to campus so late. I was impressed with the gesture. I was happy with the sentiment, but let us be honest, that was an awful lot of cookie for one girl living alone in a small dorm room.
His efforts and adventures to visit me did not go unnoticed by others. I had a suitemate named Kari my junior year who had a friend whose boyfriend would complain about going out of his way to pick her up for things. Kari, when she heard her friend's story said, "He isn't willing to drive a few miles out of his way to pick you up? My suitemate has a boyfriend who will walk five miles in the snow, in worn out shoes to visit her. [That did actually happen once.] That is what love looks like. I'm not sure that guy is worth your time if he can't drive a few miles to help you once in a while without complaining."
What can I say, My Mr. Gaba is a keeper.
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