My oldest son wasn’t going to win the bet we made and I knew it even as I crafted the challenge to him in the grocery line.

His hand was on a bag, a nicely packaged offering of sugar and fat and a list of things we couldn’t pronounce. Now, it helps to know that since he was his younger brother’s age, I’ve been teaching the boy how to conduct himself in a kitchen and a grocery store. He cooks with me. He has shopped with me. We’ve been to South side farms to see dirt and crops and farmers.

Aside from the fact that his memory is as poor as his pockets–he has no money and no memory–I’m banking on the faith that these lessons about meal preparation, taste, seasoning, contamination, and presentation are going somewhere.

Occasionally I test him. I ask, “What do you taste?” And his average gets better and better. The more I expose him, the better he gets. At least once way back in the day, he could use his taste buds and not his eyes to list the ingredients of a soup that I threw a dozen things in. And with 70% accuracy.

“If you can tell me how to make donuts, you can have it.”

The boy has not met a challenge that he hadn’t already met.

I tell him, in moments like these, “Use all your powers.”

“I’m going to ask Grandma,” he said.

“I don’t think my Mama has ever made donuts,” I said.

“It’s has to be like making cornbread.”

He went into the story that we laugh at about when Mama came over last year to show us how she makes her cornbread. It’s one of his ways of saying that he knows I can make cornbread but that Mama’s is better. The story is funny but that’s for another post.

I laughed and I decided at that moment where our Saturday afternoon would be. I whispered it to the littlest among us because he wouldn’t tell the secret. Then, we paid for our groceries and finished the first half of the day.

The second half included a visit to the Oriental Institute for my budding Egypt scholar. Then, I told them that we were getting dessert before dinner. I have learned to say these things upon knowing we would. We went to the place where we could buy the best donuts in Chicago, Old Fashioned Donuts. We stood across the street waiting for cars to pass, and I told them, “This is the place where you will eat the best donuts in our great city. And you’ll learn how they’re made.”

It was a really bad bet that I posed that morning. Going to Roseland and looking into that window while Mr. Bulloch worked his magic was everything. I didn’t forget the bet, but the boys did.

After all, I set the one up anyway. I wanted to take the boys to South Michigan, among that sea of South side wonder. I wanted to hear the older boy say, to the licking and smacking of the younger one, “This is the best donut in the city.”