Highlight: The best birthday cake I ever had was my Leslie cake. I think it was my fifth birthday (you know, the party where I got to invite friends), and Leslie Lindgren was my on-again-off-again boytoy. He was a blond Adonis, overly affectionate and unashamed of our love. The cake was a masterpiece, a two-layer pile of frosting emblazoned with a big pink head with blond hair and blue eyes. It was a perfect likeness. Of course he was at the party, and I can't remember his reaction at seeing himself on the cake, but I can't think he minded. I mean, seriously, we used to play "marriage" in front of the house, walking somberly down the sidewalk to the corner where we would exchange vows and, sometimes, a hasty smooch.
Not-so-highlight: The most ghetto cake I ever had was on my 12th or 13th birthday. It was a simple family affair, and I had requested an angel food cake. Because we were going to put strawberry topping on it after it was cut, it was unfrosted and looked a little naked on the plate. We had run out of birthday candles—not surprising with everyone having birthdays willy-nilly around there—so we McGyvered a solution by spearing the cake with a foot-long fireplace match. "Sing fast, everyone, this baby's burnin like a mutha."
Most of my cakes were the typical frosted cake mix in a 9x13 pan. For some unknown reason, my parents were fond of taking the birthday picture at the very peak of the candle blow, so we have many, many photographs of us kids with bulging cheeks and eyes like crazed fanatics at a balloon factory.
Somewhere along the way, I think it was my mom who banned pictures of the candle blow. "Please, Jer, let me have one photo of my child looking normal." It's a wonder we didn't all end up at the Sevick Center.*
* The Sevick Center was a school for children with developmental disabilities. We used to sneak over the fence after hours because they had all the coolest playground equipment on spongy black mats instead of sand.
My eyebrow may say, "No, no, no," but my 'stache is saying, "Yes, yes, yes!"
1 comment:
Um... Eyebrow Dude kind of throws me... but my bestest-ever birthday cake came when I was (I believe) nine. Mom had bought me the first six Star Wars action figures and stuck them on top of the cake. I never did get all of the frosting out of the little peg holes in the bottoms of their feet...
A couple of years ago, she tried this same approach with a Darth Maul cake, just to make me laugh.
As you can no doubt tell, I am a total nerd.
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