Remember Oreo cookies from when you were a little kid? That's right, the brown chocolate crisp stuff with that wonderfully sweet white icing in the middle. (I'm not sure what flavor I thought it was; even back then, I knew what vanilla was supposed to taste like, and Oreo filling wasn't vanilla.) Did you twist the cookie open every time to get to the good stuff first?

My mother likes to tell a story of the day I had my first Oreo. I was some months old at the time when my mother invited my grandparents for a visit. My mother gave me one of these wondrous cookies; Grandma told her to watch me carefully; and, without any prior knowledge, I twisted the Oreo open in the traditional fashion. Mother was pleased, if somewhat amazed. I guess some things really are instinctive, even in us humans.

There's something inherently magical about Oreos. Everyone has a fond memory somewhere of coming home from grade school and finding a plate of Oreos with a tall glass of icy cold milk; I feel sorry for anyone so deprived as not to have that memory. Part of the memory for me is twisting open the first Oreo on the plate, if not all the rest, as a kind of tribute to that first exploration and discovery. Also, I think I believed, deep down inside, that the white part was the best, and was therefore the part to be eaten first. Occasionally I would make "double stuff" Oreos before the name brand ever appeared, if I had the patience to eat two plain boring chocolate wafers from two different cookies before squashing the other halves together to make one gloriously massive cookie.

Even today, as a near-adult, I cannot stop the primal instincts that go with eating Oreos. Despite the fact that I know exactly what I'll find inside, the subconscious curiosity and the need to explore are too strong to bother fighting. And, though I have since developed a fairly strong personal code of "save the best for last," the insides of Oreos are too messy to attempt to save - and far too much fun. n