Mama's been worried. Really, really worried. More so than her usual worried-about-nothing - except-she-has to worry anxiety.

"Have you heard anything about how the world is supposed to end next month?" she asked recently.

Oh Lawd. I had been hearing about it for a while now, but had hoped Mama had somehow missed it between worrying about her celebrity tabloid romances and if Drew Carey was going to last on "The Price Is Right."

"I have but I don't think it's anything to worry about," I tried to console her.

But Mama is a professional worrier and she has founded facts to back up her fear.

Just about every headline in the news is another ‘sign' that the Mayans were right and the world is ending next month, 12/21/12 to be exact.

"I think it has more to do with the fact that I am turning 40 a few days before that," I told Mama.

She did not appreciate my humor. She was worried.

You would have thought that she heard from a reliable source like Sylvia Browne.

"Mama, I don't understand why all these people get upset ... if you know where you are going in the great hereafter, it should be a hallelujah moment instead of an uh-oh!"

Then, it happened.

Twinkies are ending.

Not just Twinkies, but the whole Hostess company.

They also make several other delectable little sugar-laden treats, but none that are supposedly the first line of defense in a zombie apocalypse.

I was starting to get worried myself.

Even more so, because Twinkies are a childhood staple my own child had not yet tried.

I once tried to get Cole one when we were on a road trip; he opted instead for a Sno Ball because of the lovely coconut.

I was more of the chocolate Cupcake girl when I was a kid.

Not that I would turn down a Twinkie, but if I had my druthers, chocolate won out every time.

As long as I had a Twinkie or a Cupcake and a Nancy Drew, Mama didn't hear from me.

"No!" Cole had exclaimed when he saw the news. "I have never even had a Twinkie! How could something like the Twinkie be going away?"

But was this, the demise of the Twinkie, the sign that the Mayans were indeed right?

I thought of all the things I had told Mama to console her: No one knows the exact time or date the world will end; all the Bible verses I had researched; the factoid sound-bites I had pulled off the Internet.

Now I was the one getting a little worried - and couldn't find a dang box of the yellow sponge cakes on a shelf anywhere to later sell on Ebay.

"I remembered something," she announced in the middle of conversation the other day. "Your father said once that the Mayans measure of time was different than ours. So I think that's wrong. I think we are looking at the date wrong and it's not going to be next month after all. I think we've got a long, long, long time."

I am not real sure my father had mentioned a whole lot about the Mayans, or the world ending in 2012 since they were married in the early ‘70's and folks weren't thinking about that then.

Things like zombies, fiscal cliffs and Mayan calendars were not on anyone's radar back in the good old ‘70s. It was bellbottoms, disco and God-awful shag carpeting.

At least Mama was satisfied with that theory though. She had quit worrying about 12/21/12 and had decided to stop listening or reading so much propaganda.

I, for one, didn't know if her hypothesis about the Mayan calendar was true or not.

And if it is, and we've got a long way to go, can we truly make it without a Twinkie?

Sudie Crouch is an award winning humor columnist and author.