deep fried Twinkie

When I tell people that I never really learned how to ride a bike, they laugh and joke about how deprived my childhood must have been. Sunday's conversation with my favorite professor adhered to the standard bike-conversation protocol. He got a good chuckle, and then we went to lunch.

We pull up to a cute hoagie joint in Moorpark and he says, "They have deep fried Twinkies."
"No," as if I've won a prize.
He smiles and nods, "Yes."

Besides fries and falafel, I have very little experience with deep fried food and I have never even been within 100 (if not more) feet of a deep fried Twinkie. I think it may be a greater novelty to me than other people, first, because of the whole deep fried thing, and second, because it's the kind of food that could only have been conceived by the mind of a goy.

After my parmesan chicken sub and good conversation, I've completely forgotten about the Twinkie. The chubby guy from the counter comes to our table with the crispy blond turd atop a styrofoam plate and sets it in front of me. Suddenly the table's quiet and everyone's watching. I semi-nervously take my fork, cut, and pause with the bite aloft, and then plunge it into my mouth.

I am stunned. It's so plasticy, so good. I say the first thing that comes to mind: "It tastes like the best day of childhood." And I mean it, but it's complicated. It doesn't taste like my childhood. There was not a day in my childhood that tasted anything like deep fried Twinkie. My childhood tastes like Rosarita beans. I mean the taste sums up everything I've ever imagined about the best childhood experiences I never had. In that first bite, it was learning to ride a bike, going to the fair, having a dog -- everything I wanted to do as a kid but didn't get to.

I'm slightly embarrassed about how moved I was by such a trifle. But it was like getting to glimpse those things and be happy for that glimpse, happy that those things exist, and ultimately more happy for the perspective of Mexican beans than individually packaged cakes.*


Chris and Jeanie Mott, the facilitators of deep-fried Twinkie revelations

*I still want to ride a bike.