Tis the season for fundraising auctions, which means donation collection begins. Both girls’ schools actually have a trivia night this weekend, and I threw up my hands between the two of them and decided on neither. I’m just a bit worn out.
I do always contribute to the auction part when asked (my “no” button is stronger now, but still no match for my “sure, no problem” button). Custom cookies are what I usually settle on. They seem to go over well, and who can’t find a reason to eat or share good cookies? The problem is I lack good marketing materials. Let me back up a bit. The problem is I had really good marketing materials and they got pitched.
Several years back I had accumulated quite the collection of cookies. I know that sounds gross – keeping cookies for years and years, but it’s not like they mold or anything. They just harden and still look good. When an event like this rolled around I just put together a “platter” of individually wrapped cookies for the display. And because I’m paranoid, all of the little cellophane packages had labels on the back that said NOT FOR CONSUMPTION – FOR DISPLAY ONLY! I thought that should cover it lest someone actually pick up an item off a display and think it was actually placed there for them to eat.
So one year at E’s school someone bid on the cookies, and when they went to claim their gift certificate, they also walked out the door with all of my cookies (and my really nice platter from Williams-Sonoma). Later that night as I was preparing to leave the event I noticed it was gone. At that point I was really freaked out that the person might eat the cookies and keel over or something. I tried to track down who claimed the prize, but they were only listed as a guest of another school family, and that school family wasn’t even in attendance. It was after midnight and I had no choice but to worry about it all night and then start making phone calls at the crack of dawn that Sunday morning. Long story short, I finally got the phone number of the lucky purchaser. I called her and blazed through the phone introductions. Breathlessly I asked her if she had eaten any of the cookies. She replied that she hadn’t. She had seen the warnings on the back, and she had pitched them in the trash. I asked her (nicely) to retrieve them (carefully, please!) from the trash, and she said it was too late. Her husband had taken the trash out to the dumpster. Before seven o’clock. A.M. On a Sunday morning. Ugh. All those cookies were gone.
I’ve never saved another cookie since.
Epilogue: She ended up returning the platter and ordering pirate cookies for her nephew’s party. She was delightful, and to tell you the truth, I don’t really miss having a bowl full of stale cookies lying around anymore. And I also just realized that I should have included those pirate cookies in this brochure. Because they ended up being some of my very best work.
And they were 100% fresh and edible.