The Cake

On our drive over to Chico this weekend (and subsequently, unbeknownst to me at the time, San Francisco), Annie was telling me a story about a girl she knows. I don’t know if I’m doing the story an injustice by giving only the pertinent parts, so, sorry Annie. The story is the base of my blog, but not the focus, so I don’t want to go into too many details.

The girl is also pregnant and saved a bit of cake from her baby shower. She enjoyed the cake so much, she sparingly consumed it over the next couple of days (something I do as well). Apparently after a night of craving the cake, she woke up to find no cake in the fridge, and a crumb filled plate accompanied by an empty glass of milk on the kitchen table.

I began thinking about that story, and how different Annie and I are. I told her that cake probably would have remained in the fridge until the battle of wills to clean the fridge collapsed for one of us. I then began to think about how funny we are about things like that. If there is only one of something left, it will stay there until turns into a fossil. It’s not laziness or un-cleanliness (at least I hope people don’t think that), but neither of us can bring ourselves to eat the last of something. I won’t say it’s true for everything we buy, but mostly rare treats.

Bread, milk, eggs; those we will finish before they go bad since they are a weekly item. Don’t get me wrong, cookies, chips and candy will be eaten to completion as well, but it usually goes something like this: ¾ of a bag of chips will disappear in 2 days, and the last quarter will last a good week, or until a new bag is purchased. Cookies will take about 3 days for the first ¾, but that last cookie may or may not ever get eaten. We will have one piece of leftover Halloween candy sitting in the big ol’ bowl on the counter until February. One shot glass full of orange juice will usually remain in the carton until it becomes orange wine. We are both aware that we do this, but neither of us can stop.

I don’t know if we’re saving it because we want to be courteous to the other person, or if we just want to get every last bit of satisfaction out of whatever special treat it is, so we want to make it last. I had a jar of hot peppers that only I eat. I ate all but 3 in the first two days, and the jar sat in the fridge for 2 weeks until Annie bought another.

When I was growing up, there were 5 other people in the house, and I wasn’t the one who went shopping, my mom was. So I don’t know if it was common courtesy on our part, but no one would eat the “last one”. This was especially true for things that were a rare treat for us. I had a reason back then though, because I didn’t go shopping. I couldn’t just grab another package of cookies, or bag of chips. I think I’ve always been this way, but only in the last 6 years of living together have infected Annie with it.

We’ve even discussed it before, and made a pact to eat whatever we see when we want it, and damn the other person’s feelings. Needless to say, it didn’t work. I would be sitting there eating the last plate of pasta and not even be able to enjoy it because I felt guilty. In between bites I would continue to offer to share. “Are you sure you don’t want any?” {munch munch} “This is really good, I can put some on another plate for you” {munch munch} “I’ve still got a few bites left” {munch munch} “Want the rest?, I probably can’t finish it anyways”{munch munch} (who’s pasta “munches”? you get the idea).

So no, I couldn’t see myself sitting at the breakfast table in the morning while my wife was sleeping, eating her last piece of cake; I’d be a wreck all day long.