Pat the Miner
Pat came home from another day working in the mines, dirty and exhausted. After a day like that, all he wanted to do was have a beer, swallow a few bites of dinner, and fall into bed. He’d be asleep as soon as his head hit the mattress.
Pat’s life working in the cookie dough mines was a hard one, yes, but it was also rewarding in its own unique way. When he saw a little kid eat a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven, those 12-hour days mining cookie dough really seemed worth it. Those cookie-sated faces were more valuable to Pat than any kind of monetary wage.
He was careful not to let anyone find out about that, though. One former miner had let that slip, and management quickly realized that if he felt that way, there was no reason to actually pay him in real money. They just slipped pictures of kids enjoying cookies into his pay envelope every week instead. Sometimes they didn’t even go that far. There were the weeks when all that management could find was a dusty yellow picture of a snowmobile parked in someone’s driveway. That coworker was eventually fired after being caught taking a bite of cookie dough straight off of the walls in the mine one day. They say he went insane from starvation since he couldn’t afford to buy food for himself.
So Pat kept that cookie enjoyment to himself, and pretended that his paycheck was the greatest gift he had ever received. It was enough to support him and his family, if you count staying warm by a fire made from cockroaches as “supporting his family.” That was all that his kids had ever known, so to them a nice smelly cockroach fire was the high point of their days. At least then the mosquitoes stayed away.
Some said the mosquitoes were so prevalent in that part of town because of the cookie dough. Others said, “What are you, insane? Mosquitoes are much more interested in blood than in cookie dough.” Then there’d be a big battle between the two factions, ending with neither side a winner, like the WarGames computer playing tic-tac-toe.
Sometimes the best move is not to play at all. Too bad the mosquito fanatics never learned that lesson. Or, well, I suppose they did learn it eventually, but not until it was too late.
Getting back to Pat. Well, there’s not much else to tell. He mined the rich cookie dough deposits of southern Pennsylvania for 35 years, until he was crushed by a giant chunk of chocolate. He will be missed by all.