Andy Malone 
Fifth grade was the last year of elementary school. Which meant fifth grade was my last chance to win The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest.
Since kindergarten, I had loved and lost The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest. There was plenty to love about this tradition. Here’s how it worked: one day in December, our teacher would walk us to the art room at our normal time. Unsuspecting, we would line up outside the door. Then, our art teacher, Mrs. H., would appear in the door frame, looking the same as always: boxy glasses, big yellow smock, clipboard in hand. She would invite us to come in and take our seats, with a faint, knowing smile, discernible only if you were paying close attention.
If you were at the front of the line, you enjoyed the freshest surprise. At the middle or the back, you heard your friends’ shouts and applause before you saw for yourself. But eventually, we all got to enter the room and to see the set-up: small buckets of vanilla icing, clusters of food dye, canisters of rainbow sprinkles and chocolate sprinkles and Sno-caps and miniature M&Ms. In front of each stool sat a perfectly round sugar cookie on a single paper plate.
The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest had begun!
By fifth grade, the contest rules bore no repeating. Still, we patiently listened to Mrs. H, fearful of losing any participatory privileges:
Rule 1: We had the rest of the period to decorate our cookies.
Rule 2: We could use any ingredient on the table, but make sure to share.
Rule 3: Talking was allowed, but not too loud.
Rule 4: There were no extra cookies. So be careful with the one you had.
We knew that our classroom teacher, Mrs. W, would pick us up five minutes early. At that point, we would leave our cookies at our seats and line up by the windows on the far side of the room. Like all of our teachers before her, Mrs. W would survey the cookies, not knowing who decorated which one. Every cookie would speak for itself. Eventually, Mrs. W would pick her favorite, thereby crowning the winner of The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest.
This was the stuff of childhood legend. Of course, cookie decorating during school hours was exciting in its own right. But the competitive element, replete with blind judging, was simply next level.
This year, the stakes were high. I had lost The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest five years running. That was how I thought about it, because I was not accustomed to losing. When things had mattered to me at school, they usually worked out in my favor. In both Kindergarten and First Grades, for example, I had earned lead roles in our class plays. In Third, I had won a school-wide art contest, and my piece – a landscape of large, brightly colored 3D shapes – went on display at the county art museum. In Fourth Grade, we had a prolonged social studies unit in which we designed our own island countries. To close out the unit, Mr. B announced that he would award the top countries gold, silver, and bronze medals. I have no idea how our countries were judged, but I have a vivid memory of praying the whole bus ride to school that morning. I rocked back and forth on the sticky green seat cushions, begging God that my country might win Gold. It did.
It’s not that I never lost. Remember, I was a fat kid. I had plenty of opportunities for defeat. I was picked last for plenty of teams and finished last in plenty of races. I was an utter failure at the annual Winter Gymnastics Showcase. To my great chagrin, all of us had to compete in the Winter Gymnastics Showcase. Rumor had it that Coach Y, our PE teacher, was a former gymnast, which explained this cruel mandate. Yearly, my Winter Gymnastics candidacy consisted of me walking across the balance beam with wobbly knees while performing awful hand choreography. Then, I would try to jump over the vault three times. That was another of Coach Y’s cruel mandates: you had to try the vault three times. So, three times, I would waddle up to the vault, lift my leg, sigh, put my leg down, and walk back to the starting line. Along the way, I would apologize to my classmates for wasting their time.
Though such sporting contests were embarrassing in the moment, they meant little to me in the long run. I didn’t value them very much because I knew they were out of my reach. They just weren’t my thing. But it was fine, because I had my things: theater, art, and, apparently, island-nation design. And when something was my thing, I won at it.
The Annual Sugar Decorating Contest should have been my thing. First, there were cookies involved. It seemed a fat boy’s unique right to excel at the cookie decorating contest. Second, it was artistic. I had proven talent there – from my framed maroon trees to my recent gallery exhibition. As a fat boy, as an artist, The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest was been mine for the taking! And yet, for five years running, come decision time, I had watched my beloved teachers reach for sugar cookies that were not mine.
Raising the stakes further, Mrs. W was my favorite teacher of all time. Like all my teachers, she was warm, kind, and smart. Her superpower, however, was her ability to inspire. Mrs. W designed fascinating tasks and provided each of us the space and encouragement to approach them in our own way. In her class, I built volcanos, invented board games, and even wrote my first original musical, a gripping account of the life of Revolutionary-war spy John Honeyman. Watch out, Lin Manuel!
With Mrs. W, my classmates were similarly inventive. She really brought out the best in all of us. If anyone could rightly judge brilliance in a sugar cookie, it was Mrs. W. So, I really wanted to win The Annual Sugar Decorating Contest, especially by her ballot.
My moment had arrived. Mrs. H finished her directions, and I got to work. I began to coat my sugar cookie in a smooth layer of vanilla icing. Otherwise, none of the other toppings would stick. It was worth it to get the icing right, so I always took my time up front, evening out the thick clumps with the thin plastic knives made available to us. While managing the icing, I planned out the rest of my design. I knew that Mrs. W valued creativity. She would not be impressed by some hum-drum snowflake or stale gingerbread man. I had to think outside the box. I brainstormed.
Mittens? Boring.
Gift boxes? Greedy.
Santa? Too Christian. Better to stay non-denominational.
My mind kept working as I flattened out the most stubborn icing mounds.
Non-denominational.
Just winter.
Winter scene.
Winter scene on a cookie.
Round cookie.
Round winter scene.
Ah ha! Snow globe!
Perfect. I would transform the cookie into a snow globe.
From there, the composition came together quickly. I reached for a small tube of blue gel icing – the perfect luster, I thought – and squeezed hard as I traced the circumference of the cookie. This took some time. As you may know, gel icings rarely behave, so I needed a few rounds to establish the globe’s thick outline. Then I added, toward the upper right side, an apostrophe-ish mark. I drew marks like these when cartooning to give my bubbles the illusion of curvature. Turns out, it worked for snow-globe cookies, too. Next, I scraped a thick layer of chocolate icing at the cookie’s now-bottom, creating the globe’s wooden base. I added chocolate sprinkles for texture.
Mrs. H walked by and noticed my work.
“Snow globe?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, arranging the last of the chocolate sprinkles.
“Very creative, Andy. As always.” She walked on. I smiled. I was on the right track.
Inside the globe, I opted for clarity and simplicity. I established sky by covering the cookie’s top half in light blue crystal sprinkles, working around the apostrophe. With the sky in place, the vanilla icing instantly became snow on the ground. Then, I poured out a small mound of mini M&Ms and sorted for green ones. I arranged them into a leafy tree, with a dab of chocolate icing for the trunk.
I looked back at the table. I inspected the small, fat tubes of seasonal garnishes. In a stroke of great luck, I found a vial of snowflake sprinkles. I strategically placed the tiny, sugary, white hexagons across the sky. I even clustered a few snowflakes on top of the tree, securing them with small dabs of icing.
I finished just as Mrs. H gave us a one-minute warning. With the spare time, I used my trusty plastic knife to contour a few snowbanks in the vanilla icing.
“All right everyone,” Mrs. H said. “Mrs. W is here and ready to judge! Put down your knives and please move any ingredients that you’re using to the middle of the table.”
I did as told, staring at my cookie the whole time. I was never one to count chickens, but this cookie-turned-snow-globe was some of my very best work. Great concept, strong execution. Victory, I sensed, was near.
We left our cookies at our stools and gathered by the windows. We watched as Mrs. W came in. She, like us, knew the routine. She paced up and down the aisles, studying each cookie, holding her smile steady. “These are all so good!” she said, more than once. “What a tough decision!”
“I know,” replied Mrs. H. “They really brought their A-games today.”
The banter was insufferable.
Mrs. W wore an excellent poker face. We watched for any signs of favor – a lingering glance, a widening grin. But she gave nothing away.
Finally, having walked the aisles twice, she turned to face us. “These really are fantastic. You should be very proud! And I know you had a very special class with Mrs. H. Did you thank her for all the extra preparation she did?”
“Thaaaank youuu Missesss H,” we said in unison, drawing our vowels out, an unbroken habit that made us sound too young for our age.
Mrs. W continued. “Okay. Well, if I have to pick just one…”
“Yes, just one!” interjected Mrs. H.
“I’ll have to go with…” she stepped forward and took one final glance across the tables. “I’ll have to go with this adorable snowman.”
This adorable snowman???
“That’s mine!” cried Gina.
“Congratulations, Gina!” exclaimed Mrs. H.
Snowman? Gina? This could not be happening.
My classmates applauded, offering Gina complements of varied volume and sincerity. I clapped too. I think I managed a “Great job!” But I was, of course, devastated.
“All right, we’re late for class,” said Mrs. W. “Let’s line up quickly.”
“And please grab your cookies on the way out!” Mrs. H called.
I walked back to my stool and picked up my snow globe. I could barely look at the thing. The blue gel, the chocolate wood, the little sugary snowflakes – they had betrayed me. Too boring, maybe. Not enough color, maybe. Should have added a sled, somehow, maybe.
Still, at least I had tried to be unique. A snowman. A snowman! I could have easily done a snowman. Anyone can do a snowman. No offense to Gina, who was perfectly nice. But seriously, anyone can do a snowman.
Though I felt I had been robbed, there was no use protesting. The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest was over. I had lost.
Back in the classroom, Mrs. W asked us to put our cookies at the corners of our desks. We couldn’t eat them until we got home, and there was nowhere else for them to go. So, for the rest of the afternoon, I had to sit with my failed snow globe in plain sight.
I thought, maybe, that my unpleasant thoughts and feelings would soften with time, the way so many thoughts and feelings do at that age. But they only got worse. I could not stand to look anywhere around the classroom. I couldn’t look at my desk, because the sight of my losing cookie made me want to hurl it out the window. I couldn’t look straight ahead, because Gina sat in the table group right across from me. At the moment, the mere sight of Gina turned my stomach, though Gina was perfectly nice and had done nothing wrong. And I couldn’t look at Mrs. W, because I felt such anger that she had not picked my snow globe cookie, opting instead for an adorable snowman. She had betrayed the value of creativity, which I thought she, like I, held most dear. So I mostly stared at the board, fixing my eyes on the chalky, lifeless numbers of our math lesson.
Even worse than not having a place to look was not having a place to talk. I was old enough to know that my jealousy and anger were ugly. And wrong. They were so ugly, and so wrong, that I would embarrass myself to confess them. Even to Hye-jin. Even to my mom.
I had to keep those ugly reactions inside. I mentally rehearsed what I knew to be the right responses:
It’s meant to be fun.
Don’t take it so serious.
Be grateful for the experience.
Be happy for Gina.
But the mental rehearsals made matters worse, illuminating the sharp divide between how I was supposed to feel and how I actually did feel. Between who I should be and who I really was.
Give it time, I thought. Give it time. You’re still a good person. Act like one.
That became my focus. Act better than you feel. Think: what would a good person do? Then: do it.
I did. Despite all the feelings churling inside me, I did the right things. I sat calmly for the rest of the afternoon. I finished all my work. During pack-up, I made it a point to go over to Gina and to congratulate her, personally. She smiled and thanked me. As I said, she was perfectly nice. After the walkers and early bussers left, I went over to Mrs. W’s desk and told her about the latest chapter book I was reading. We often discussed our books, and I knew it was right to carry on as normal, as if I harbored no ill will.
That night, back at home, I took a bite of the sugar cookie. Like many decorated cookies, it was underwhelming. The toppings had been chosen for look, not for taste. But I ate it anyway. Out of spite. If this fat boy was gonna lose The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest, he was at least gonna eat his cookie.
***
Fifth grade carried on. Eventually, my jealousy and anger did soften. Gina and I remained friendly. In fact, we were both selected for All-County Chorus that year. We had a fun time learning the music together. I still loved Mrs. W and cherished every last one of her projects.
But, truth be told, I never fully got past The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest. It was easy enough to forgive Gina and Mrs. W for their roles in my defeat. What I couldn’t shake was the way that I had reacted. It was hard to lose – to a snowman, nonetheless. But it was even harder to meet myself in loss. It was hard to see an ugliness and immaturity that had been lurking inside me. It was hard to watch myself act good on the outside without actually feeling good on the inside.
It was one of those moments, perhaps my first, when I realized that I might not actually live up to all the values and ideals that I had learned to revere over the course of my childhood. So many novels and TV shows and conversations with adults told me how to be good, and I strived to be that, and mostly, I succeeded. But sometimes – like when I really, really wanted to win The Annual Sugar Cookie Decorating Contest, and my favorite teacher did not pick me – I became ugly and bad.
To me, this was scary. It was so scary to discover even a slice of badness in myself. I felt I had no choice but to keep all those feelings inside. I did not want to be judged. So on the outside, I took my loss in stride. But on the inside, I was left to wonder about my badness; to fear when I might meet it again.
The things you learn, decorating a sugar cookie.
