For years I would join my friend Jane’s family on their vacation in the Outer Banks. We spent most of our time lazing on the beach with G&Ts but every once in a while we would take an excursion. My favorite excursion was a fifteen minute drive up the coast to a place called Orange Blossom, a bakery known for its amazingly delicious oversized apple fritters.
People would come from all different parts of the island to score one of these bad boys. They were delectable and in demand. Sometimes they would sell out and you would have to wait twenty minutes till the next batch came out of the oven. You may find yourself at the end of a 10 person deep line waiting for the next batch, and you couldn’t be certain how many fritters each person might take. You’d be waiting in mouth-watering anticipation wondering if your fritter was this batch, the next or even another one after.
Anyway one morning Jane, her father and I arrived to join a line of about seven or eight people, all waiting for the next batch with that quality of irritability that is distinctive to early mornings, when coffee is needed and hunger acute. At the front of the line was a very tall woman, probably in her fifties, she had wiry blond hair and equally wiry energy, as if she caused her own unique form of electrocution.
As the scent grew stronger we knew the next batch was headed our way. Soon enough it arrived and the very large tin tray was placed on top of the counter with a dozen golden apple fritters. You could feel the excitement in the air as your nostrils widened and saliva collected in your mouth.
Shortly after the tray was set down, the baker retrieved her thin plastic gloves from underneath the counter, but as she turned away to put them on, something terrible happened.
You see up until the fritters arrived the wiry woman had been chatting with the couple in line behind her, praising these peerless pastries; her speech no doubt fueled her excitement and added exponentially to her already nervous energy, which resulted in the following inexplicable catastrophe:
As the baker turned around to put her hands in the gloves, the woman suddenly made an extremely elaborate gesture for which there was seemingly no precipitating cause. A gesture so spontaneous and unprompted that you could only imagine she had a form of physical Tourettes, specifically a kind of Tourettes that compels one to carry out– with uncontrollable urgency and fervor– any worst-case-scenario action that a given context could warrant. She had Worst-Case-Scenario Tourettes.
With her unnecessary unbounded movement, the woman hit the tin tray from underneath with such great force that the fritters flew!
Everyone’s eyes grew wide. Their faces contorted in horror. The chipper impatience of the fritter-fiends transformed to anxious foreboding as the fritters soared into the air. Their sweet anticipations turned to preemptive bitterness as they watched the fritter descend. The silence of disbelief amplified the thud of every fritter as it hit the sandy tiled bakery floor.
Only three fritters landed back on the tray. No one spoke. We watched the baker put all three into a bag and hand them to the offender. The sweet warm crispy apple deliciousness our mouths anticipated was replaced by sour disgust and a collective sense of injustice.