The Cake is a Lie
Most of the time when I was growing up I didn’t get a formal birthday party. When I did get one, well it was a mixed bag. None of them were bad, but some were definitely better than others. On the other hand, I always got a cake.
Actually that’s not quite true, but back to that in a minute.
I suppose the cakes were a mixed bag as well. Sometimes they were store bought, though that wasn’t the norm. The norm would have been home-baked but from a mix. I think I got about as many made from scratch, though, as I did that were bought ready made. My memory on this is all rather dim.
But about those exceptions… There were a few times when I was asked what kind of cake I wanted, maybe three or four, maybe five or six, again, I really don’t remember. What I do remember is that two of those times I was actually assertive enough to ask for what I wanted. What I wanted was pie. Cake is good enough, I pretty much never turn it down, but pie is so much better. Cream pies, fruit pies, whatever. Even cobblers and tarts and strudels.
This all came up in a conversation with God this week and he mostly just nodded his head. Then he told me that he’d let me in on one of the secrets of the universe. I leaned in close, and he whispered to me that the reason we decorate cakes is to make up for their inherent inferiority to pie.
It’s a good thing to know, but as “secrets of the universe” go, well, I think that one could use a little icing.
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