One more thing about food and being a picky eater involuntarily.
Say you work in a library, and they know when your birthday is, so you come in on September 6th to work and surprise! They made you a cake! You're so happy and you love them all for being so good to you, and they cut you a big slice of cake...
… and it's something weird like red velvet with cream cheese frosting.
Seriously, what do you do? I sort of deflected the conversation, got everybody talking so no one was paying super close attention to me. Then I mashed up the cake so it looked like I took some bites, complimented the chef, but protested that I had just eaten and was stuffed to bursting.
But then, who makes weird food for someone else's celebration? Not that I'm not grateful for the gesture, but if you're going to make a surprise cake for someone, it's probably best to either surreptitiously find out what their tastes are (by watching me eat in the break room or hiding questions in conversation) or make something very normal. Chocolate and vanilla are safe because it seems like, among cake-eaters, the people who don't like them, or can't eat them, are the exception rather than the rule. I mean, if it's someone else's party, but you just got this delightful recipe for red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, well... who are you really making the cake for?
But again, it's about the gesture. They didn't purposefully make me a cake I couldn't eat. They intentionally made me a cake that they thought I would love, because they wanted to make me happy on my birthday. That's wonderful. It's good to have people in your life like that. And I wanted to make them happy by not snubbing their wonderful gift. Even though Burt did.
Then this one time when I was a kid, I read picture book about this kid who was having a really bad day on his birthday. At the beginning, he asks his mom if she made him the chocolate cake he wanted and she said, “Oh, no, honey, you know not everybody likes chocolate so I made a plain vanilla one.” And I'm all, dude, it's his birthday. Make him the cake he wants. And what do you mean not everyone likes chocolate? Not everybody likes everything. Not everybody likes vanilla, either. And chocolate is one of the “safe” flavors. Cake mix comes primarily in chocolate and vanilla not as a stark commentary of race relations in the twentieth century, but because most people like or at least tolerate chocolate and vanilla. Maybe if the kid had asked for something weird like... red velvet with cream cheese frosting, I could understand why Mom wouldn't want to serve it to his guests. But then, if he was my kid, I'd probably make him the weird one for later. It's not spoiling him any more than a regular cake is.
Then this one time, a family member took me out to lunch for my birthday. She picked a restaurant on an island in the bay. Because of my food issues, I asked her what kind of restaurant it was and she said it had American food. That's good, they usually have things I can eat. If worse comes to worse, I'll order a plain slab of chicken.
We got there, and it was a seafood restaurant. Okay, yeah, it's the Chesapeake, the food you catch there is American, but a restaurant that serves American food sort of has connotations in this country. It means... like, hamburgers and chicken strips and all that jazz. I can't eat seafood. When she was in the restroom the waiter came up to take our orders (my dad was also there) and asked me what I wanted. I said I didn't think there was anything I could eat. “Maybe I could help. What do you usually like?” the waiter offered helpfully.
“I was actually not told we would be going to a seafood restaurant,” I said politely.
And you know what? The guy actually got me a plain chicken breast to eat. No seasonings or anything, but I cold eat it. I was starving. I would have pushed the food to the back of my throat if I had to (I have done that before, and trust me, it's not pretty but it gets the food down when Burt doesn't want it. And if I try hard I can make him keep it.) I was not happy, but... well, I know her. She didn't do it on purpose. It's just her way.
Anyway, all this talk about food has made me hungry. I'm gonna find some gummy bears or something. Ciao, bella!
