I’ve always had a secret stash of Twinkies, just in case, only I never imagined it would come to this. It was not until I recently learned that my beloved sweet snack faced extinction that the reality of the literal end of their shelf life truly confronted me.

My first reaction was to sprint to my clothes closet and check my clandestine Twinkie stockpile. After a frantic search I found them … all 15 individually plastic-wrapped golden delicious cream-filled cakes hermetically sealed in a large glass jar … a final retirement gift from my last class of third-grade students. Four years and counting, and they’re as good as the day they were baked.

As I held the jar in my hands and stared deeply at its contents, my mind wandered back to my childhood days when I first discovered what would become a lifelong companion. It was like I saw the future, and the future was cream-filled, baby.