Old Friends and an Old Favorite: Chocolate Chip Cookies

There was an annoying new kid in my class one year. He was the second Jewish person I had ever met. He was intelligent, but frequently getting yelled at for one thing or another.

Sophomore year of high school, we were sitting in a class. A conniseur of music, he was (loudly) drumming a beat waiting for class to start. He was leaning his chair back, in his own mind, banging wildly and methodically on the table. Popular Girl #1 yelled, "Stop it, Ben!" Popular Girl #2, "You're driving me insane! Quit it!"

Sitting at the end of the table with the Popular Girls, I was suffering from a headache. "Ben, please stop. I have a headache." A smirk crossed his lips, he put his chair down, and stopped banging on the tables.

I learned from him that day that being polite will get you much further than telling people what to do.

I learned a lot more from him in the coming years as we teamed together to run our class and became friends who disagreed on many things, but respected each other nonetheless. One of his best friends was one of my least favorite people, but I was civil and Ben didn't try to persuade me.

So when I moved out of NY and much closer to Hartford, I decided to meet up with him. As always, a baked good between two people either leads to a heartfelt hug or an excuse to not hug. As it were, I was able to hug him with the cookies behind his head and we had a long afternoon not discussing politics, eating pizza, enjoying his brother play music, meeting his friends, walking around, and talking about love and people. 

For such a classic friend, I made classic chocolate chip cookies. These are my no-fail compliment cookies. I am very humble about them because they are just the Nestle Tollhouse recipe. But as my cook says, they're always made with L-O-V-E.