Short Story

THE CHOSEN

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

When I was a kid, I attended a private Lutheran school from First Grade all the way through my senior year in high school; being in an unusually close environment such as that with a bunch of other kids was like having a very large extended family and, just like siblings, there were days when we fought like cats and dogs and there were times when we’d do anything for one another. 

Being a relatively small school, there were some features we didn’t have that you would normally find in a larger public school; for example, we had a gymnasium but not an auditorium so phys ed and basketball games were held in the same room as our concerts, plays, pep rallies and graduations. We also did not have a cafeteria where students could buy food for lunch; everyone brought their own lunch, which we ate in the lunchroom or student union, and were able to buy snacks, desserts, candy, ice cream and cartons of milk in the small school store just off the lunchroom. 

The snacks in the little store were nothing special – mostly things like chips, pretzels, Hostess Twinkies and Snowballs, Sugar Daddys, Tootsie Rolls and novelty candy items like Pixie Stix, miniature wax bottles filled with a sticky sweet liquid, button candy and tiny ice cream cones that weren’t ice cream at all but some kind of rubbery sugar substance – but we also had real ice cream and individual cartons of both regular milk and chocolate milk; it’s funny but the feature I remember most about those milk cartons was the round perforation on the top side where a straw could be inserted for mess-free drinking. 

One unforgettable day when I was in fifth grade, a representative from Drakes Cakes came to our school and our class learned it had been selected as the official ‘taste tester’ for a bunch of new products being considered for the school store; once every week for about four months we got to sample items that weren’t as yet available to the public for sale such as Funny Bones, Ring Dings, Devil Dogs, Yodels, Coffee Cakes and Fruit Pies. 

Man oh man … as you can well imagine, that was one of the most amazing times in our young lives and by far the best year we ever had in school; my class was the envy of all the other kids and I still can’t resist those delicious devil’s food cake ‘hot dogs’ filled with whipped cream that we all know as Devil Dogs.

NAR © 2023

Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt!

47 thoughts on “THE CHOSEN”

    1. Haha! Once a school marm always a school marm.
      I wish I could answer your question but I have no idea how our teacher made use of the experience. At 10 years of age, all we cared about was when the Drakes man was coming next!
      Little Debbie didn’t stand a chance against Drakes!

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  5. So much of what you wrote about reminds me of my experience growing up and going to private Christian schools, and how we were missing features considered common in other schools. My high school gym had a stage and was used for sports, assemblies, plays, art shows, etc. We had a tuck shop where we could buy candy and chips. My elementary school didn’t even have a gym until years later, after I had graduated from university, but we did have permission from a different nearby school (a military style all boys school) for the grade 7s and 8s to come over and borrow their gym for basketball and volleyball lessons. Neither school had a cafeteria – in elementary school we ate in our classroom, and in high school we ate on the floor by our lockers. One thing that I can’t relate to was we never got to be taste testers for any brands.

    Great story!

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    1. Thanks for sharing all this information, Nicole! I’m amazed by the similarities and a few of the things you mentioned brought back memories I had forgotten about!
      First off, let me just say NO ONE, especially a child, should have to sit on the floor while eating. There’s no excuse for that.
      After reading your comments, I remembered that Grades 1-4 ate lunch in their classrooms; upon entering Grade 5 we ate in the lunchroom. I can only assume the ‘powers that be’ felt 6-9 year olds were too young to mingle with the older kids.
      Also, there was only one gymnasium for both the elementary and high schools and it was located in the high school. The two buildings were connected by a something called a ‘breezeway’ – an enclosed portable structure about 15 feet long, attached to the elementary school door on one side and the high school door on the other side. This was a convenient way for us to get from one building to the other without being exposed to rain or snow. There was also a side door that led to the school parking lot.
      We also had a large chapel which was located in the elementary school; it was an active parish for people in the community to attend on Sundays and holy days. Students went to chapel every morning at 9AM.
      I loved attending the same school for 12 years and making life-long friends.
      Thanks for a brilliant comment!

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      1. To clarify, we chose to eat on the floor by our lockers – that was a convenient spot for my friend group, and for many others. I knew of other people who would go into classrooms, and eat at the desks there, and that was an option for all of us. It would have been nice to have had a student lounge though.

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      1. When we had morning snack in grade school, they offered milk, or Orange Beep. Beep is basically thick, sweet, orange sugar juice. DELICIOUS! And it always went first (the milk was a bit warm once it got to us kids in the back half of the classroom…ick!).

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    1. Well, I did and still do love those Devil Dogs but I have to admit I did the same thing with the chocolate frosting on cupcakes that Misky did. My mother was an excellent cook but she couldn’t bake to save her life. The only desserts she could make were Italian cannoli and cream puffs. These all-American Drakes Cakes were a real nice change of pace for me!

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  15. Twinklies …. Whose tongue was the longest, and who could whip out all the whipped cream from the middle without breaking the cake. And there’s no double-entendre in any that sentence! I don’t do double-entendre. 😂

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    1. For someone who doesn’t do double entendre, you sure as hell described that in a way that had my mind going somewhere that was not at all Twinkie-related and you seemed mighty comfortable doing it, too. Nope, I don’t do double-entendre either; I go right for the cream 😂 😝

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      1. Just telling it like it is, sis. 😂 And I always ate the chocolate frosting off the cupcake before eating the cake. I bet you’re frightened to death of eating those cinnamon flavoured Hot Tamales, eh?

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  16. I always find myself transported at a soothing place when your ink’s shade, cara, is… MrRogersSicilianOchre.

    (And yes, before I reached the end of your Six…Devil Dogs was my pick)

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    1. Well, hell! After reading your comment and Misky’s, I’m really glad I wrote this little six. As you know, the people at Hostess and Drakes Cakes are all perverts with their salacious anatomically-constructed snack items. Just look at Snowballs and Devil Dogs, two of my personal favorites btw. Please, you think I didn’t know what a Devil Dog REALLY was supposed to be? Even at the tender age of 10, I knew. 😂😝

      MrRogersSicilianOchre – perfect. You had me giggling like a 10 year old in a Drakes Cakes factory.

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