My wife Margo is a super chef, producing meals fit for a king. She is also rightfully famous among family and friends for her cookies. And she delights in passing out her special old German recipe cookies wherever she goes; to nurses, librarians, letter carriers, etc.

I remember Christmases that produced over 120 dozen cookies of various shapes and colors and tastes. And I still wonder how I kept my weight from exploding upwards, being the guinea pig who suffered through all the necessary taste testing.

This year was different. My poor sweetheart had to wear a stabilizing collar on her neck and baking was out of the question. Now this certainly was my opportunity to shine.

I had never baked anything before but I had been Margo’s assistant, meaning that I was in charge of clean up, washing, and drying. Having been a chef’s assistant should certainly put a mantle of culinary respectability on my shoulders.

So I ventured forth and gleaned from the Internet a recipe for an Old-fashioned Soft Sugar Cookie. And while Margo was taking an afternoon nap I assembled the ingredients, measured them carefully, and set them up in the order I would be using them.

I was now almost ready to start the dough. But first I had to wipe the table top clean of the flour I had spilled accidentally. Also, the spatula I had used for the Crisco had slipped off into the sugar. But these were minor details and speedily corrected.

Now you will surely wonder how the cookies turned out. They looked great, they looked mouth wateringly scrumptious. The recipe called them Old-fashioned Soft Sugar Cookies, but I cannot vouch for the old-fashioned part, I am only eighty-seven. Were they sugar cookies? Absolutely, I had done a super job here. Did they look like cookies? Yes, I said so before. Were they soft? Well, it depends on the scale of hardness used. No, they did not scratch diamonds as Margo asserted, that is a wifely exaggeration.

Anyway, he day after my foray into cookie bakery I was sitting in my favorite arm chair listening to Mozart and let my thoughts wander to wherever they wanted to go on their own. I do this sometimes, letting them just drift here and there.

And while they were drifting I had another sip of coffee and then picked up another of my freshly baked cookies. Hold it right here, said my mind. Did you notice some similarities?

Just as you collected all those ingredients for the cookies yesterday, so you had collected knowledge, experiences, and ideas as you went through life. Then you mixed them together, kneaded them, and finally shaped them to suit you. And if you did a good job they emerged firm and worth keeping.

I thanked my mind for this profound insight and added a little promise to it. I will make sure never to keep any half-baked cookies around or half-baked ideas either.