Dusting off the cookie's bad rap

Yield not to temptation: a guy can't march to that old, militantly Christian hymn a hundred per cent or life would get boring. But I should have the other day.
Dining out with the family and some friends, I decided on something uncharacteristic and ordered a deep-fried selection from the menu. I almost never go with anything like fish and chips, but thought, ah, what the heck. That's what most of the others were having. Why not live dangerously for a change? Yielding can't always be sin.
With ketchup pretty much the closest to vegetable content on the plate -- save for the token dollop of creamy cole slaw -- it was scrumptious for the first while. By about two-thirds of the way through I noticed it was plenty filling, but not in a good way. Always having been taught to clean my plate at meals, however, I finished to the last bite.
It weighed on my stomach for the rest of the evening, rendering me into a sleepy lethargia. I still felt a bit dragged out by it the next morning. Man, I thought, it's going to take a lot of vegetables and flaxseed and fibrous stuff to work this out of my system.
I've been doing the ground-up flax regimen for quite some time now, a little bit every day. It's supposed to do wonders. I found another way to incorporate a little more of the oily, high-fibre seed into my diet not long ago. Thinking there must be a recipe for flaxseed cookies somewhere out there, I went online and did a search. Sure enough, I found one with a heaping helping of seeds and other wholesome ingredients like oatmeal and cranberries.
As far as cookies go, that's not bad. I whipped up a batch and they turned out mighty tasty. So we're on a roll where that's concerned.
On the subject of good, clean living, does anyone know the answer to this one? Summertime, the kids are off, what do you say to a teenager who won't go to sleep until all hours, then refuses to get out of bed till noon?
"What's the difference?" is the usual answer to my challenge of what I consider a slothful habit.
Indeed, what is the difference? Is it unhealthy to be full of vim and vigour in the wee hours and then remain immersed in slumber through the following morning? Is it character-building to be up at the crack of dawn? I could utter platitudes like 'The early bird gets the worm,' if that even means anything, or the 'healthy, wealthy and wise' thing, but I'm appearing mighty stumped on this one. And if there really was a benefit to my having been up hours earlier, don't you think I should be up for a match of wits? Shouldn't I be an astounding success in life by now?
Maybe I'll stick with the subject of cookies as an excellent source of protein and fibre. Not long after my flaxseed experiment, we received some samples of another interesting recipe from a neighbour. These cookies included, of all things, chick peas. That's something I always keep in supply around the house anyway to make things like hummus or to include in bean salads.
These too were great cookies.
So there you go: little tea-time treats made with ingredients like flax and chick peas, full of vegetable proteins, Omega-3 fatty acids and fibre, just the things dietitians keep telling us to include more of in our diets.
It took us adults the better part of our lives, a lot of rising with the chickens, but we finally found a way to get back to the cookie diet we loved so much as kids -- without having to feel the least bit guilty about it.