A Piece of Cake

T-minus 6 minutes until the opening of the gates at the Fairmont County Fair and Stacey was losing it.  She’d been planning the fair’s opening day for close to six months—down to every last detail.  On paper, this was to be the best fair that the town of Fairmont had ever seen.  But things were not going according to plan.

The official Book of Rules had been printed and distributed to each of the hand-selected volunteers, but it was clear to Stacey that no one had bothered to read it. 

Violation of Rule 26, Article 7:  the volunteers at the corn dog stand were only wearing one hair net each, when the rule clearly stated that they each wear two.

Violation of Rule 13, Article 9:  volunteer clowns should be sure their socks are of two different colors and designs to maximize audience enjoyment.

Violation of Rule 71, Article 5:  the cakewalk station needs to supply cake (and only cake) as a prize to whichever lucky fair-attendee happens to be on the winning square when the music stops.

Stacey could deal with the corn dog stand workers’ carelessness by bringing extra hair nets around and the clown problem could be easily solved by making the volunteers trade socks until no clown wore two matching ones, but the ignorance of the cakewalk volunteers was crossing the line.

Who do these people think they are, serving pie instead of cake?  At my fair!  And what’s with all these extra rules?  This is a cakewalk, for God’s sake!  It’s meant to be easy enough for all Fairmont citizens, Stacey thought to herself as she marched over to the cakewalk station.  Furious, she told herself it was time to teach them—and all the other volunteers for that matter—a lesson.

“I don’t know what all these pies are doing here, but this is a cakewalk,” Stacey boomed as she reached across the table and grabbed the plate with the biggest piece of blueberry pie.  She whipped the plate in front of her body to her right to show the volunteers what a ridiculous joke this entire fair had turned into.  As she did, the blueberry goop sloshed off the side of the plate and landed at her feet with a juicy plop!

There was a moment of silence in which no one knew whether the fair had rules against laughing at this sort of thing.

Through her clenched teeth Stacey managed to say, “this should be a piece of cake!  All of it!  Just a piece of cake—is that asking too much?”

She marched away, yelling at the janitorial staff through her headset.  T-minus 3 minutes until the opening of the gates.  This fair was turning out to be anything but a piece of cake.

*This story is for my mom—thanks for being a better mom than I ever could’ve asked for.  I love you and Happy Mother’s Day! 

No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk

No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk

“Oh, don’t worry, honey.  There’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

“Unless that milk was the only thing you had to eat or drink for two weeks straight and you just spilled it and now you and your entire family are probably gonna starve or die or something… Then you can cry about it.”

“Well… I suppose it’s alright to cry then.”

“Or if you’re an actor and the director tells you Hey! You better start crying over that spilt milk or you’re fired, buddy!  In that case, you’d have to cry over split milk if you wanted to keep your job.”

“Yes, I guess that’s right.”

“Or if you were alive before the vacuum cleaner was invented and your job was to go around a restaurant with a straw and quickly slurp up the drinks people spilled before it got on the carpet.  And if you were lactose intolerant, then it would be okay to cry about spilt milk—everyone would understand.”

“That’s, uhh, very creative, hon.  I don’t think—“

“Or if you were a milkman and you spilled an entire truck load of milk and you knew you were gonna get fired because that’s exactly the kind of thing a milkman can’t do, then it would be okay to cry over spilt milk.”

 “These are very unique examples, but the expression—“

“Or if you were only pretending to be a milkman but really you were an undercover cop and you were dropping off milk at the mob boss’ house and it was one of those sting operations and the bottles of milk you dropped off had little teeny tiny invisible-like microphones and cameras and you were supposed to give them the milk and get out of there but you were nervous and your hands were sweating and you dropped the whole case of milk right outside their door and they opened it to see what all the noise was and they looked down at the split milk and it was sort of sparking and they could tell you were trying to bug their joint and they just looked up at you and you could tell they were going to kill everyone and everything you loved and then they were gonna kill you.  Then it would be okay to cry—not just for you but for your whole family, you know?”

“Enough.  I love how creative you are, but this needs to stop.  No use crying over spilt milk is an expression—it’s like what happened, happened and crying about it isn’t going to change a thing.  You understand?  Okay, now will you please eat your breakfast?  You’re going to be late for school.”