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!