Chipping in for some tough cookies

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/09/2017 (3233 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By all accounts, my buddy Big Daddy Tazz and I have a lot in common with cookies.

For starters, we’re both slightly nutty, contain way too much sugar and, physically speaking, we’re both extremely round.

Unfortunately, also like cookies, the two of us tend to crumble when exposed to the pressures of everyday life, which is why we were feeling a little stressed out Monday morning when we arrived at Polo Park shopping centre to compete in a no-holds-barred cookie-decorating contest in support of the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation.

Tazz, a cookie-loving comedian, and I were one of 17 teams on hand to launch Tim Hortons Smile Cookie Week, wherein the proceeds from every $1 smile cookie sold in the city until Sunday go to the rehabilitation foundation to help pay for programs and specialized equipment for disabled children and youths up to the age of 21.

For the record, if you are a big-shot newspaper columnist taking part in a contest sponsored by Tim Hortons, you should not arrive carrying a cup of Starbucks coffee, because the Tims guy organizing the event will hide it under your table. I’m not complaining; I’m just saying.

Before the sixth annual cookie-decorating battle kicked off, there was a trivia contest to determine how much time each team had to decorate their cookie.

Unlike last year, Tazz and I correctly answered one of the trivia questions, so we had something like a minute to work with. Also unlike last year, this time we refrained from sucking the pink and blue icing out of the tubes before the contest began. Even better, in a demonstration of sheer willpower, we did not eat our decorated cookies until after the judging was finished, which was a major improvement from last year.

The way this contest worked was each team was equipped with a big box of Tims chocolate chunk cookies and two tubes of sugar-intensive icing. Under the rules, one person on each team was supposed to paint a portrait of the other person via the standard artistic technique of squeezing globs of icing on top of a cookie.

In the charitable spirit of the competition, Tazz and I decided to cheat, so each of us painted an icing portrait of the other one on at least two cookies.

“They’re both good,” Tazz chirped when I showed him the cookie portraits featuring his signature goatee and impish grin. “I can see myself in them, although I’d much rather see them inside myself.”

Before I tell you what happened, I will point out that last year, Smile Cookie Week raised a record $135,000 for the foundation to pay for specialized equipment — everything from adaptive bicycles and wheelchairs to iPads to help kids learn and communicate with their families — and inclusive leisure programs.

“That was amazing,” said Jessica Cable, communications and marketing co-ordinator for the foundation. “To raise that kind of money in a week is incredible. It’s a huge deal. We get no government funding, so we rely entirely on community support and fundraisers like this.”

Cable said they are hoping to top $140,000 this week. “Every year we up the ante a little bit and we’re hoping we can do that this year,” she said. “It also gives us so much publicity and people become aware of what we do.”

The judging in Monday’s cookie slugfest was handled by Bernard Rosello, 12, a super-energetic Grade 7 student at General Byng School who was born without a right leg and motors around on a prosthetic steel limb with a bouncy fibreglass blade at the bottom.

“I use it (the sports leg) every day until winter,” Bernard told Tazz and I in between bites of cookie. “I can’t bring this in the snow, so I use my other prosthetic. This is my sports leg. I have another one with an actual foot. This one is for sports like basketball and soccer.”

With his infectious smile and can-do attitude, he’s also a budding sledge hockey star, thanks to a $1,500 sledge he recently received from the foundation. “They got me a new razor sledge,” Bernard said. “It has thinner blades than a normal sledge so you can go faster. It gives you more mobility.

“I’m basically a normal person. Instead of two legs, I have one. I just have to keep it clean and not wreck it. It’s cool and awesome.”

When it came to judging, though, Bernard passed us by and awarded the coveted Smile Cookie Cup to a team comprising my old buddy Richard Cloutier from CJOB and Power 97 personality Randy Parker.

“I was here last year and it was a train wreck,” Randy told me, clutching the golden cup in a vise-like grip. “I picked up my game this year and took home the gold.”

“It’s been a long time coming,” chimed in Richard. “After 25 years in broadcasting, I’ve finally arrived.”

So, not surprisingly, Tazz and I once again crumbled in the cookie contest. Fortunately, my good friend took this year’s loss in stride.

“If it was a cookie-eating contest, they wouldn’t have stood a chance,” he said, pointing at our prodigious bellies. “Also, I think everyone else cheated by having better artistic skills than us.”

But I think Jason Kopytko, the regional marketing manager for Tims, who hid my rival coffee at the start of the battle, said it best. “To support a wonderful organization like the rehabilitation foundation and kids that need specialized resources is a privilege,” he told us.

So drop whatever you are doing right now, people, and go out and buy a smile cookie or three… then brush your teeth, because that icing is really packed with sugar.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca