by Chef Troy
I recently discovered that the new Super Target store in my area sells Krispy Kreme donuts. I don't want to get into the debate about whether these donuts are the bendin' end (they are) or completely overrated (they are not, and the police are pulling up in front of your house right now to arrest your donut-hating ass). The point is, my petite female boss is a Krispy Kreme HOUND. I bet I outweigh her by more than 150 pounds, and she can put away as many of them as I can.
Anyway, I was late for work on Thursday - nearly an hour late - and I promised to atone by bringing a dozen Krispy Kremes for our department yesterday. She not only ordered an extra dozen to take home "to her husband" (suuuuuuuure, boss) but asked me to see if they had her favorite specialty donut and buy her one if they did. What IS her favorite? A monstrosity that's like a jelly donut, but filled with more icing. *shudder* I am a great big fat donut-lovin' glutton, and I don't think I would dare to eat something like that. She went on to rhapsodize, "And if you microwave it for a couple of seconds, the extra icing just comes oozing out onto your fingers, and it takes a loooong time to lick it all off." I know that sounds almost like sexual harassment, but I am sure she was just lost in a reverie about the Krispy Kreme Zone.
So Friday morning, I arrived outside the doors of Super Target promptly at 7:30, only to discover that unlike the Ordinary Target, they don't open until 8:00. (Apparently it takes an extra half hour to make the store super.) I sat in my car for a while, and at 7:45 I got out and wandered over to the doors to wait.
Whereupon people began joining me, one by one. Most of them appeared to be dressed for professional jobs, but otherwise they represented a remarkable cross-section of ethnicity, age, sex, and class. Except we all were marked with the Number of the Yeast. It was obvious that none of us was waiting outside those doors to buy pantyhose, or light bulbs, or a new bathing suit... the Donut Jones was apparent throughout. It was, in fact, so obvious that we soon were laughing about it. We all began talking about Krispy Kremes, naming our favorite types, and generally enjoying an outdoor camaraderie normally experienced only by the nicotine-stained pariahs in smoking areas outside smoke-free office buildings.
At one point I remarked, "I can't help but notice that we all appear to be in good moods here. It seems to me that the sort of people who would wait in line for donuts are generally more pleasant to be around than the sort of people who wait in line for, say, coffee." We agreed ruefully that within a few months there would be so many people outside the doors at opening time it wouldn't be fun anymore... more like waiting to buy concert tickets, with all the jealous protection of one's place in line and suspicious glares at possible line-jumpers that that implies.
Finally they unlocked the doors, and the Donut People and I sauntered unhurriedly over to the Krispy Kreme display to claim our bounty. I didn't see anyone get less than a dozen; the people who bought only one dozen were the ones picking and choosing the fancier ones. The people who were depleting the edifice of boxes of dozens of plain glazed Krispy Kremes (and oh, how those two adjectives "plain" and "glazed" fail to accurately describe the delicate simplicity of the sugar-limned toroids in those boxes – they’re like fine bone china) all took at least two dozen, and I saw one man take six dozen. I know he was probably buying them for a group of people, as I was, but it was fun to imagine him taking them home and stacking them on a broomstick before settling in for a day of icing-fueled daytime TV.
Waving goodbye to the Donut People, I hefted my two boxes of joy and headed out to my car, knowing I would again be nearly an hour late to work and that my boss would have no objection to that fact.