The "We Named Our Cat After A Cookie" Story

It was an ordinary day. I was talking to my daughter Brynn and she was telling me that Camille, my granddaughter, was having a fundraiser at school and they were selling OtisSpunkmeyer cookies. Wow, the same kind of cookies that my kids grew up on. In the late 80s and early 90s, when my kids were in high school at Manheim Township where I taught, they would talk all the time about the cookies that they had in the cafeteria at lunchtime. The best chocolate chip and sugar cookies that they had ever eaten they would tell us. Now they have to be great because I thought that my wife made the best chocolate chip and sugar cookies. She really does, you know!. I just finished eating a batch of them dunked in milk. Well, one day I finally had a chance to try some in school and they were very good. Really big cookies! They made them fresh everyday in the cafeteria and you could smell them cooking from my classroom which was around the corner from the cafeteria. The kids wanted to know if I could bring any of the dough home so their mom could cook them at home for us. I asked in the cafeteria and they said I could buy them by the box. They would sell them to me for what the school paid for them. A box held a gross and wasn't cheap. No quite sure anymore how expensive they were. They were frozen individual pre-measured units in the box. All you had to do was put them in the oven and heat them up for 18 minutes. So easy, I could do that. We ate then almost every night for dessert. Dipped them in milk and they were great dipping cookies. Absorbed the milk perfectly. I can taste and smell them as I type this! A gross was gone in no time with 5 people eating them. The company, Otis Spunkmeyer, Inc., was founded in Oakland California in 1977. The owner, KennethRawlings took the suggestion of his 12-year-old daughter, and named the company OtisSpunkmeyer. The company originally was a retail store which grew into a few stores and eventually went to just wholesale sales. In 1987 they bought a pair of DC-3 aircraft and put their logo on them and used them to deliver the cookies. Quite a few were and still are purchased for the U.S. Army for the troops. Eventually we grew tired of them and went on to cherry crisp which was made in the cafeteria. in 2002 we bought a Himalayan cat and the kids suggested we namehim "Otis", after the cookies that they were so fond of in high school. And we did. We now have a living, constant reminder of the warm, doughie, sweet smelling cookies we loved so much. Otis is now 18 years old and still never ate a single Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate chip cookie, but he is still warm, sweet smelling, and at times doughie. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.