Eating Oreos Without Milk
Content Warning: References to inpatient psychiatric contexts and psychosis; saneism
In the locked ward, snacks are available for the patients. Lorna Doones and Oreos, all you can eat, Saltines, and a machine that serves fruit punch and orange juice. The patients can pour a half a glass of orange juice and half of fruit punch to make a cocktail, or a Locked-Up Cocktail.
There is no milk.
Oreos are delicious, but only with milk.
We ate the Oreos dry, and they don’t taste the same without dipping them into a glass of cold milk. Some patients dip them into the fruit punch or orange juice, but they are disappointed.
Only the most psychotic patients did that.
I think I dipped the Oreos in juice when I was there, but that was a long time ago. Lorna Doones can be eaten without milk–they’re better dipped into coffee. We only had coffee at breakfast, but it came on the trays with the other food.
If a patient is hungry enough, they might eat the Oreos dry, but it’s never the same. The chocolate gets stuck in their teeth, and it’s difficult to pick out, and when people talk, the chunks of cookie pieces can be seen, and they look like they actually belong in the psychiatric hospital.
There is no explanation as to why there are no cartons of milk, but someone hypothesizes that the cartons could be used as a weapon and thrown around if a patient was unstable enough.
Dangerous things exist on the locked ward, anything could be used as a tool of violence.
No coffee makers are allowed on the unit, because they would be made of glass, and it would be hot water, and it could be used to throw into the mental health worker’s or nurse’s face if they made the patients angry.
We were allowed to make tea with the tap water, if we let the water run, it would be hot enough to put in a Styrofoam cup with a tea bag.
Only if we were desperate.
No caffeine was allowed.
But the patients didn’t like to eat the Oreos, because we didn’t have any milk to go with them. Oreos aren’t the same without milk.
There’s a certain way to dip Oreos to make them taste the best. Put the milk in a small glass and dip it in until the bubbles stop coming from the cookie. That way it is dipped to perfection, and it won’t fall apart that easily. After that, put the whole Oreo in your mouth.
That’s the way my grandmother taught me how to eat Oreos. We would eat them in the afternoon, when she came over after school, and if I did well in school, she let me have five, which was an enormous number of cookies to eat when I was little. She showed me how to dip them carefully, and precisely, so they were the most delicious. My fingers got covered with milk and chocolate, and we would laugh. I wouldn’t wash my hands until I finished eating all my cookies.
My grandmother’s sister died in a psychiatric hospital. I was too young when my grandmother passed, so I never got a chance to ask her about my great-aunt, the only other person in my family who had ever been insane, and locked away, like me, a crazy woman, someone who had lost her mind.
I only heard about my great-aunt after I had gotten out of the hospital the first time. My other great-aunts who were still around told my mother that their sister’s husband had driven her insane. She had children, and they grew up, and I had no idea if any of them were as crazy as I had been.
I have vague memories of the hospital; I was in about three or four times. I kept going back because I didn’t want to take my medication, because I liked feeling that I was in touch with God. I wanted to believe that I was special, but now I know that I was simply insane, and I never had the capacity to save the world, like I wanted.
Sometimes, I think of the Oreos without any milk. And the lunatics who would try to dip them in fruit punch or orange juice. I would never do that now, because I know it is an act of desperation, one that an unstable person would perform because they don’t know any better.
It’s the process of dipping an Oreo into something that’s automatic, a person feels a desire to put the cookie into a glass of liquid. A primal response.
If I eat Oreos now, I eat them the correct way. I dip them precisely in the milk and wait for them to be ready to devour the whole cookie at once. I never tell anyone about where I was when people ate Oreos without milk, because milk cartons could have been a weapon, and to people that would sound bizarre.
Most of the world does not make sense, but that’s not what’s important now. I have the freedom to eat what I want, when I want, and I’m not locked up, even though the world is dysfunctional, I am able to see another sunrise or hear the sparrows sing their morning song, dreaming of Oreos and a glass of cold milk, and a new day bursting with possibilities.
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About the Author
Shannon O’Connor holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She has been published previously in Wordgathering, as well as Oddball Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal, 365 Tomorrows, and others. She is the chairperson of the Boston Chapter of the National Writers Union. She can be found on her Substack, Ms. Hen’s World.