My mom and dad tried to instill good eating habits in me from a very young age. Since I, like any other hyperactive three-year-old who instinctively craves sugar, preferred candy and sweets to broccoli and cucumbers, they did so by lying to my face.

If questioned (in a court of law, if I had any say), my folks would no doubt try and soften the charge. “We told a fib or two for the benefit of our young child’s health,” they’d probably claim. But who are you going to trust? The traumatized victim or the proven liars?

Their most infamous dupe of all time was convincing a young, so-gullible little Me that Ritz crackers were actually cookies. They would refer to them as such whenever I was within earshot, and whenever I’d ask for a cookie they’d simply hand me a Ritz cracker and send me on my way. This wasn’t too bad of a deal because I’ll be the first to admit - Ritz crackers are kind of The Shit. But who’s to say I wouldn’t have been just as addicted to chocolate chip cookies if I had only been exposed to them instead?

Do you see what they stole from me?

This despicable charade continued until I was about three years of age, when my mom made the fatal mistake of quickly stopping by the bakery of our local grocery store while I was in her shopping cart. The kindly old woman behind the counter spotted me and asked if I would like a free cookie. My mom must have cringed and no doubt muffled a few select curses when she heard that, fully realizing that her carefully fabricated illusion was about to come crashing down like the World Trade Center 1929 stock market.

(Yep, still too soon for 9/11 humor. Trying again in five years.)

I said I would absolutely LOVE a cookie, fully expecting a delicious, salty Ritz cracker. Imagine my surprise, confusion and complete disorientation when the woman instead handed me a sweet, perfectly warm chocolate chip cookie. I glanced down at said “cookie”, utterly perplexed. I then looked at the rows of similar-looking items atop the display counter, then up at the smiling old bakery lady and finally over at my now crimson-faced matriarch. It was like the final scene from The Usual Suspects and I was Officer Dave Kujan.

In the end I made a bit of a fuss, but really - how angry can a three-year-old be when he’s holding a freshly-baked cookie that’s absolutely bursting at the seams with semi-melted chocolate chip morsels?

Answer: Not very.