She scrunched her nose and twisted her lips into a mask of disgust. My feathers ruffled almost instantly, seeing as how she was staring at a Laura-original at the time, and a photograph that I liked well enough to set as my laptop's desktop image. Here is a smaller version of the "offensive" material.

I bit my lip and let it ride. I tried to ignore my discomposed plumage, I really did try...but it haunted me, and I could not let it go. Almost an hour later, we were in the car and I roared emotionally out of the stillness, "What's wrong with my picture anyway!?"

She looked toward me, startled. She gulped and replied meekly, "I just don't like those cookies."

"The Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies!?" She nodded. "But MY version are really good. Really moist." I sniffed at the air and pointed my nose toward the Heavens as my chin took a more prominent position in my profile.

"Yes, I know that you have the best version there is to have...extra bananas, right?" I nodded with jerky spirit. "If only there weren't chocolate chips. I don't like chocolate—"

"But yet you eat Peanut M&M's like nobody's business," I interjected rudely.

"Oh," she snorted. "I'm mainly after the peanut."

Half of my genes came from this woman. Half. That's almost a whole fifty percent. The other half came from a man who, during the winter months, runs through the snow in nothing but a pair of bedroom slippers and his tightie whities to get the morning paper from the mailbox across the front lawn which borders that busy morning highway.