My Cupcake Fell, and other cake-related tragedies
I’ve been thinking about cake a lot lately because unfortunately it’s been a big craving of mine. And cake produces strong emotions. My mom’s family—her brother, to be exact—has a whole Cake Trilogy of stories that still seem to get under my uncle’s skin however many decades after the fact. There’s the marble cake on top of the fridge that he got excited about eating—until it was in his mouth and he realized it wasn’t marble cake at all, it had just been up there for too long. Then there was the car ride to the party during which he had been entrusted with holding the cake on his lap—but then he fell asleep and the cake ended up on the floor. It turns out I don’t remember the third part of the trilogy, but I’m sure it’s good.
When I was teaching preschool, one of our most memorable students was a little guy named Sebastian who was so much fun. He also tended to be a little emotional and needy—not unusually so, but sometimes very entertainingly so. Especially after he learned to put his hands out when he fell, which happened several times a day, and finally ended the era of school-time facial injuries for him. One day it was someone’s birthday and all the kids were eating cupcakes. Suddenly Sebastian broke into hysterical tears. We finally got it out of him that he was sad because his cupcake had fallen. He had lost his cupcake. We looked on the floor to pick it up, and would have replaced it. But there wasn’t any cupcake in the vicinity, so we asked him where it fell.
“My cupcake fell in my mouth and I lost it!”
Holding back laughter, we gently explained that he had already eaten his whole cupcake, and that it wasn’t lost, it was just in his belly. He must have been OK with that, because I don’t remember it dragging out after that.
I thought about Sebastian today when I devoured the rest of the delicious blueberry coffeecake my mother-in-law made this weekend. Suddenly it was gone, but I wasn’t ready to finish eating it yet. I wanted there to still be a bunch more coffeecake. But what I had was lost. I felt just a tiny bit inconsolable about it.
