i am a twinkie.

yellow on the outside and white on the inside, i hang out in my cellophane wrapper day after day with that little red label telling the world that i am a twinkie. lately though, i've come to resent that little red label.

being a twinkie isn't quite as high profile or as cool as my friend the oreo. someone, somehwhere in the world is arguing about whether the oreo should be accepted as a whole, or just appreciated for the white inner filling, but nobody ever argues about my inner feelings. people tend to accept twinkies like me rather serenely and pass us by without anything as much of a second thought. if people do bother to talk about me, they talk about how bad i am, about how many preservatives i have, or about how i'm going to destroy their system.

the really disturbing thing is that people tend to want the whiteness in me. i wouldn't be quite as special to everyone if i was yellow on the outside and yellow on the inside as well. if that were the case, i'd just be... cornbread. it's that whiteness in me that somehow makes me more tolerable than just cornbread. it makes me sweeter, more palatable to the tongue.

i know somebody who used to be a twinkie. as a matter of fact, he got paid to get all dressed up as a twinkie and wander around grocery stores, day after day. he'd be this six foot walking, talking twinkie that people would randomly run into on aisle nine. it must have been easy though, to be a twinkie during the day, get paid for it, and go home to your own life after your shift for the day was over. but here i stay a twinkie, day in, day out. yellow on the outside and white on the inside. i'll stay this way until someone manages to suck all the white out of me and toss the rest into the wastebasket.

if i'm really lucky, i'll just be eaten quickly and painlessly by some little kid during his lunch hour, or some hungry stoner on the binge. i guess it's odd, though. Little kids and wasted people are the only folks who seem to be able to accept me for what i am.

future | retro