Let Them Eat Cake

Do you ever have one of those “aha” moments that just sort of makes you feel like an idiot? Or reminds you that you are completely unhip or out of it? I’ve had quite a few of those in the last few months, and I blame it on…well, anything I can blame it on. Who wants to admit she not only had no clue what the little notches on the side of the foil box were for, but that she had no idea the little notches existed?

To my credit, I am a bit of a flake, so I kind of have an excuse for being dingy sometimes. However, I think I’m going beyond the top end of even my dinginess meter. For example, during a conversation with my husband, I realized that I had totally misunderstood, or rather, misinterpreted due to my sunny nature, the old saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” Now, you may wonder how anyone with any kind of sense at all can misinterpret that, but I did. In my head, I’m picturing a piece of cake and the cake it came from, so, to me, of course you can have your cake and eat it, too, because you’ll have some left to munch on. Always seeing the glass half full, I guess. However, my DH pointed out that the idea is that we’re only dealing with one piece of cake at a time, which changes the whole meaning. Obviously, if you eat the cake, it’s gone. What a freakin’ bummer.

So me, being a happy ending kind of girl, can’t deal with the whole idea of not being able to enjoy my piece of cake because it will be gone and there’s none left to nibble on. And we’re talking about cake here…cake. I love cake. I can’t tell you how stupidly disappointed I felt about the loss of this piece of cake (because of course I’m going to eat it and not just stare at it for eternity). However, I felt dumber for realizing that for decades when someone used this saying I secretly snickered to myself at how disillusioned the person was. Of course, you can have your cake!. There’s a never-ending supply, perhaps in Oz or in that crazy place in that Tom Petty video for Don’t Come Around Here No More where the girl turns into—you guessed it!—cake.

I know technology often flummoxes people and makes them feel out of it. I’m not too far behind because I love technology, but there are certain things I don’t understand that get me into trouble when I do figure them out. For example, the whole autocorrect thing with IPhones had me mystified. I’ve never had this problem. I kept seeing people posting the messages they sent where “Get milk and eggs” somehow, through the magic of IPhone’s autocorrect dictionary, got changed and sent as “I slept with your sister at our wedding.” I always wondered how this could happen. I mean, how fast are you typing? I still use my index fingers to text, like any good Neanderthal, not my thumbs. Not there yet. Even at that, how fast do you have to type to produce a message and send it without proofing it first?

And therein lies the epiphany.

The people sending these messages, whether tapped out with their thumbs, index fingers, or noses, hit the send button before proofing their messages, unlike me who proofreads her texts about three times and even revises them once or twice before hesitantly letting them go.

Yes, I proof my texts. I PROOFREAD MY TEXT MESSAGES! Who does that? Who? Me, the Queen of Unhip writer person who lives in a world filled with cake, that’s who.

I know I can’t be the only person who has experienced these types of ego-crushing realizations. What about you? Any unsettling self-realizations lately? Please do share in the comments section. It may not make you feel better, but it will do me a world of good. 

Happy reading!