A few months ago it was my birthday and my really wowza friends sent a whole entire cake to me at work. It was awesome, but also not awesome because I kind of started crying at my desk a liiiiiitle bit and, as previously discussed, crying on public transit isn't cool and it turns out crying at work isn't cool either. In fact, it's worse. I pulled myself together.
So anyways, great. I've got one more year of life, and now I also have a cake to myself which I promptly bring home in its sweet lil pink box. I have a piece of cake that night (carefully slicing around the "#HBDelaney" written in icing on the top) but then realize that while I have no qualms with slowly eating an entire cake by myself, maybe I shouldn't be such a selfish B and should probably bring the cake back to work the next day to share.
Let the record show at this point, that while I am only one girl, the prospect of eating a whole cake by myself was not a matter of "if", but of "should". Should I eat a whole chocolate-coconut-buttercream-#HBDelaney cake? Probably not. Could I? Fucking yes.
The next morning, in my incredible foresight and planning, I set the cake in it's adorable box and matching paper bag (what is a cake without coordinating accessories?) and place it next to my bedroom door so there is no way I can forget said cake. On the way to my bus stop I make a crucial misstep that leads to the dramatic climax of this story — I go down into the MUNI Metro station to refill my Clipper card so that I don't ride the bus without paying and continue to be a very upstanding citizen. But also so that I don't get caught and get a $100 fine.
I pay a stupid amount of money to purchase my pass for this godforsaken system of mass transit, dash out of the underground MUNI station back to my bus stop, catch the number 22 just in time, and settle in for my 45 minute ride with the unruly middle school youth of SF that I share my morning commute with.
Approximately, T-minus 10 minutes until my arrival at work I make a grave discovery. The #HBDelaney cake is not with HBDelaney aka the birthday girl aka me. I know what you are thinking right now because I am thinking it too: FUCK.
At this point in time, I was also having a nice text chat with my pal New York Jason. There's no better way to pass 45 minutes on the bus than by slowly working your thumbs into an arthritic stupor by texting. Our conversation at the moment of Cake Crisis 2015 looked kind of like this:
Needless to say, I was shocked and also upset and also guilty for the following reasons:
a) I don't lose shit. I am great at keeping track of belongings and also it was a CAKE. In a BAG. With HANDLES FOR CARRYING WITH ME AT ALL TIMES.
b) I just lost a delicious cake. A cake that was once entirely mine and was no doubt going to continue being delicious while I ate it throughout the day. Any dessert opportunity lost should be mourned.
c) My friends had just bought me a fancy cake and I had just wasted their effort and cold hard post-grad cash. Not cool.
Immediately after confessing my cake sins, I moved into the immoral pleading stage where I tried to tell Jason this was a horrible secret and no one could know. If I wasn't going straight to cake hell for losing the damn thing, I was certainly going for trying to cover it up and taking accomplices with me.
So I mope my way to work lamenting the loss of the cake in a hyperbolic way. I was going through the seven stages of grief and hoping acceptance would come soon. I had left the cake in that dank, sad MUNI station in my inane desire to buy a bus pass. I could just envision it sitting there near the turnstiles, slowly absorbing the urine scent of all MUNI stations, passerby side-eyeing it skeptically and wondering if such an innocent looking package could maybe contain a bomb.
Do you know how many times someone has ever asked to verify I paid my fare to ride the bus? Zero. Do you know how many times I have lost a cake because I was trying to abide by the law? Once. This was clearly public transit's fault.
I went through the day under a gray, cake-shaped cloud. To say I sulked would be an understatement. I arrived home. And then I sent Jason this text:
I was a horrible idiot. The cake was still in its pink bag in its matching box sitting next to my door. While the moral of the story may initially seems to be "Never pay to use the MUNI", further consideration leads me to believe it's really "When your friends give you a cake, keep it to yourself". I'd like to blame public transit, but really I'm going to blame generosity.
Next week, I'll tell you about the appointment I had with a brain doctor to see if I should be concerned that I falsified a very elaborate and convincing memory of leaving home with the cake. (Just kidding).