4/27
My girlfriend and I watched VEEP last night and at about 10pm she had a craving for something sweet so like a dutiful boyfriend I offered to go and get her something from the store. She wanted a Boston Creme donut so I drove to Dunkin Donuts.
It reminded me of a moment from when I was younger. We lived in a three bedroom ranch house off of State Park Road in Greenville, SC. I love that house. To this day I have fantasies of buying it and living there. It was a ranch house in a middle class neighborhood and there were woods across the street, a basketball court in the drive way, a magnolia tree in the front yard and chain link fence that wrapped all the way around.
Every summer my cousin would come spend a couple of weeks with us at that house on State Park Road. It was fun. It made each night feel like a sleepover party which meant we would always stay up later than normal. One night we were up super late. It must have been 1 or 2 in the morning. My dad woke up and was like what are you two doing? And for some reason we said we wanted donuts. I must have been 10 years old a the time and at 10 years old donuts did not have the same guilt inducing effect that they do on me now. At 10 I used to eat 3 or 4 Krispy Kremes at a sitting. And that was for breakfast. Like that’s how I was starting my day: with fried dough with sugar dripping off of it. Not just regular sugar. Krispy Kreme sugar is mixed with high fructose corn syrup and diabetes and I would have four of them and not even blink an eye. And for some reason these delicious little death circles were socially acceptable. We would sell donuts for charity events. Or school fund raisers. That is some sneaky shit right there.
Hey we’re selling these heart attack rings to raise money for our basketball team!
Poison your family so we can have a new park!
And so that night my dad woke up at 1am and we begged him to take us to Krispy Kreme. Which is kind of a brilliant way to get out of trouble. “I know we are up way past our bedtime…but do we have an offer for you!”
He said no of course because he was a good parent but over the next 20 minutes we begged and pleaded and told him it would be an adventure. An adventure we would never forget. Driving 15 minutes to the Krispy Kreme and back. That was what passed for adventure in 1989.We wouldn’t tell mom or my sisters and that this adventure would be our secret and that we should carpe diem and all those other things and eventually, because my dad is a good parent, he said yes. And we put our shoes on over our pajamas and got into the our 1978 Volvo and drove 15 minutes down Pleasantburg Drive to the Krispy Kreme. I’m sure the people working there were like what kind of parent is this. We got a dozen to go and we got one each to eat there. At the counter. With milk. And we watched the donuts on the line and the liquid sugar cover them. Then we went home and we went to bed and while of course we told mom and my sisters. But it was an adventure, and it was something I’ll never forget.
