Some Stanford University professors developed years ago what became known as the “marshmallow test” to gauge children’s self-control and willpower. A lot of us would flunk that exam.
What the scholars did was put kids in a room with just one snack they really liked. Most of the them chose a marshmallow.
The kids were told that the researcher had to leave for a few minutes and that they could eat the marshmallow or whatever snack they selected while the professor was gone.
But they complicated matters by informing the children that if they did not eat that one marshmallow, they would get an additional marshmallow when the researcher returned.
From that experiment, the Stanford folks who were paid good money for such sophisticated research determined that kids who didn’t eat the first marshmallow would be more successful in life.
In considering all of the ramifications of that experiment, I decided that I could have waited for the second treat if it had just been a plain, untoasted marshmallow.
But if it had been roasted over a campfire black on the outside and melted inside, I would have eaten the first marshmallow before it got cold.
Roasting hot dogs and marshmallows seems to have faded from our culinary culture like popcorn balls and fruitcakes. But I still get a craving for a marshmallow heated over an open fire.
The Boy Scout troop I joined growing up in Springhill had monthly expeditions into the wood to study plants and trees, tie knots, shoot bows and arrows and things like that.
Those trips always ended with a campfire. We cooked hot dogs and marshmallows and learned how to put out the fires.
I didn’t learn to identify many trees or tie all those different kinds of knots, but the roasted marshmallows kept me in the troop for a couple of extra years.
When my sons were little, we had a big wiener roast every Halloween night in the empty lot by our house for all the kids who were trick or treating.
They came in droves and didn’t leave until we roasted some marshmallows. I don’t think any of them would have passed up that first marshmallow even if they could have had two marshmallows by waiting a little while.
My mother used to make hot chocolate on cold nights and melt a marshmallow in it. Even the Stanford professors could not have waited to slurp those marshmallows off the hot chocolate.
One of my aunts always brought a sweet potato casserole to our Christmas dinners. It had a thick covering of lightly browned marshmallows on top and was better than any of the desserts.
None of us kids had a seat at the dining room table for those holiday meals. We were assigned to the kitchen or card tables set up in the living room. There were times when the sweet potato casserole didn’t make it to us after our uncles got their big helpings.
On those occasions, my mother would wait until after supper and give us the jar of marshmallow cream she kept in the pantry. We would spread it on graham crackers with peanut butter or just eat it straight from the jar with a spoon.
Marshmallow cream is like the inside of a roasted marshmallow. If the Stanford people had given those kids a spoon of marshmallow cream, they would have eaten it for sure and could not have delayed that gratification long enough to get a second scoop.
We all understand that the Stanford research was designed to show that kids who could not wait for their treats had no self-control and would not amount to a hill of beans later in life.
But there are exceptions to that finding. I used to ride the bus to school with a couple of farm boys who could not wait until noon to eat the food their mothers packed for lunch.
They wiped out their fried chicken, pork chops, biscuits and cornbread as soon as they got on the bus. One became a physician, and the other was an engineer.
If those boys had participated in the Stanford research project, the professors who handed them their first marshmallows would probably have had some fingers bitten off if they had not had really good reflexes.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES