How To Make A Gingerbread Man

So, you decided you wanted to make gingerbread cookies. You wanted to bond with one another. Experience what everyone else had. Making a gingerbread cookie is half the battle, you think. To see new perspectives, make new experiences, you have to share them with another because you’re afraid to be alone and people tell you it’s better with someone. Would you have ever made a gingerbread cookie all on your own? What if making gingerbread cookies wasn’t a tradition? You never cared for tradition otherwise, did you?

First, of course, is the gestation. Who is your little gingerbread man going to be? She wants to make a gingerbread girl, but you’re not so keen. Because, to you, it’s much easier to ice on some little overalls or a little fire hat than a tiny dress or nurse outfit. Because you still don’t know what a nurse outfit looks like outside of your wife’s Halloween costume 5 years back. You wanted to be a fireman when you were a kid (and now you’re a desk jockey, ha!), so why not make a tiny little fireman all on your own? A temporary toy, just for when it’s nice and soft and cute and only when you do a good job.

After you decide just who you want this gingerbread cookie to be, now, you must get all the tools to create it. You could attempt to make your own gingerbread, but that’s pretty difficult, so, instead, you just buy it from Walmart. You also buy the icing from Walmart, and the gum drops, and the sprinkles. Because, of course, you don’t know how to make any of them. You don’t really like doing research, carpe diem. With these tools, you’ll create the best gingerbread cookie you can conceive. Sadly, however, what you can conceive is only what you can see on baking Pinterest. 

Once you’ve set up all your ingredients, you can set to decorating your little gingerbread warrior. By using all your tools, you can surely create the gingerbread cookie you see online, can’t you? No. Of course not. Sadly, your gingerbread is stale, and your icing is thick and your gumdrops are slimy. You tried your best to follow the tutorial, but then you realized that the people you saw on Pinterest who made tiny firemen cookies are actually good at baking. And they’re also good at making icing and sprinkles and gumdrops and they have photoshop. You are not good at any of those things. You are also not good at designing cookies, and all the detail you tried hard to emulate on your cookie only makes it look more messy and muddled and- frankly, unappetizing. 

By the end of this journey, you now have the responsibility of eating your cookie, because you’ve been told not to waste good food, even if it’s a bit clunky and stale and ugly. Your little gingerbread cookie is completely edible, so they tell you. You look over to hers, to see that, as expected, she lacked any skills and her cookie also looks quite messy and quite gross. But you laugh, and, in a weird way, you feel you’re meant to love that cookie anyway. Even though it’s horrific and sad and somehow melting, you still know it’s yours. Looking back, you wonder if your cookie would have served as a better chef cookie instead…

Well, the cookie tasted like how Walmart cookies will taste. But, still, you can’t help but miss the little cookie you held in your hand, with its ugly fireman suit and lopsided hat. You can’t imagine forcing yourself to experience that all over again, but you miss the cookie and now, after a second of drinking some milk, you miss the taste. Next year, you might just order a batch of premade cookies, you’ll let the bakers decide what to actually do with the design. Get a few chef cookies, maybe a doctor cookie, a writer cookie, salesman cookie, Mormon cookie. Maybe it’ll be chocolate gingerbread, or it’ll have cinnamon icing or it’ll be two cookies to make a sandwich. That’s the beauty of cookies, no matter whether they’re ugly or cute, stale or fresh, fireman or pizza delivery guy, they’ll always be your delicious cookie.

“Gingerbread Men” by thelazydba is licensed under CC BY 2.0.