Is Nothing Sacred?

The Headline of the Week in last week’s edition, from the Associated Press, noted “Strike Over, Twinkie Shortage Ends”. It was slugged by my comment, “And All of America Breathes a Huge Sigh of Relief”. It’s pretty rare that people comment on the headlines, and even more rare that the comment is negative.

But Christian, who didn’t say where he was from, wrote:

Usually, I go through and read This is True and agree with all the dry wit that you insert into every issue. This time, however, I read the AP Headline and was not humored. How can you dare poke fun of the twinkie? Honestly, it was not two weeks ago when I walked into a gas station and saw the first pack of twinkies in what had seemed years. I was suddenly over come with an urge to buy as many as I could. As I unwrapped my set of cream filled goodness, memories stirred of a not-so-long-ago youth. It was later that day when I pointed it out to a friend that I hadn’t had one in years that I was told of the ‘Twinkie Strike’. You made fun of this situation, but think of all the twinkies that have been consumed since they were first released by young and old alike. Now tell me you didn’t actually sit back and smile when you realized that you could walk to your local grocery, or pull in to get gas and go buy yourself some Twinkies!

I passed Christian’s letter around to a few friends and there was a striking consensus: they agree that they thought he was serious. I fear that Christian is spending too much time in all those gas stations, breathing in the fumes. Because if I can’t make fun of Twinkies, I may as well kill myself right now.

Next week: a letter criticizing me for “making light of suicide.”

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There was such a letter — sort of. Bob in Massachusetts wrote: “Randy, you’re taking this Twinkie issue much too seriously. To think that you would contemplate suicide over something as silly as Twinkies. You should kill yourself over something much more important than that.” Thanks, Bob!