A neighbor had a birthday party this past weekend. Pairs of eight-year-old girls ran through my backyard, screaming, “Hurry up! We have to win the scavenger hunt!” All I could think was, “I wonder if they have ice cream cake. Probably not yet.”
Let me first say that I do not have birthday cake on my birthday. I don’t think I’ve ever had birthday cake on my birthday. I have birthday apple pie instead. My Mom makes the best apple pie imaginable. I’ve had other people’s homemade apple pies, and they never come close. I’ll smile and say, “Thank you. This is good,” but it’s never all THAT good. Plato had this theory of perfect forms on which all forms are based on and strive to be like. All apple pies in the world aim for the perfection of my Mom’s apple pies.
I’ve been eating birthday apple pie for as long as I can remember, and here are the rules: One slice of apple pie should be equal to one-sixth of the pie. It is good with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream, two to three slices of sharp cheddar cheese, and a large glass of milk. The cheese can be excluded if the pie is for dessert. If the apple pie is for breakfast (morning-after birthday pie), substitute the vanilla ice cream for another slice of cheese. Save the crust for last.
I realize birthday pie and the rules I’ve constructed around its consumption are peculiar. Luckily, my parents realized this before me. So instead of serving pie at any of my childhood birthday parties, they served cake. A frosted cake with volcanoes and plastic dinosaurs on top (for a dino-themed birthday), a red and white striped shirt cake (for a Where’s Waldo? birthday). And swarms of my friends would run around inside and outside my house, playing carefully planned, thematic games that involved a touch of chaos for fun. I didn’t actually have swarms of friends as a kid, but growing up, everyone’s your friend. It’s especially important to invite the popular kids, because if they come, you’re legitimized as a person.
I once went to an unpopular kid’s birthday party. He wasn’t particularly nice, socially well-adjusted, or clean, and I didn’t really like him. But I thought how crappy it would be if nobody came to your birthday party. He had invited the entire class to his party, and I tried to talk my friends into going because if there were enough of us there, we’d have fun. As it turned out, everyone else somehow convinced their parents attending the party would be social suicide. I was the only one at the party.
His parents had decorated the house with streamers and balloons and everything, and I felt so bad for them. I wanted to explain that everyone else wanted to come, but I couldn’t. What do you say in a situation like that? I remember eating some cake, playing a board game, looking at baseball cards, and hitting a punching bag. And I remember leaving. There was a huge tray of Snickers bars as party favors. His mother gave me one. As I left the house, heading toward my family’s minivan, I felt gypped. Sure, I still felt bad for him and his parents, but I had done this really nice thing by going to his party. They could have given me twenty candy bars and still have plenty left over. In some weird way, by only receiving one Snickers, I felt it was okay not to like this guy.
But eventually, all the birthday parties I went to got smaller. People stopped inviting everyone. It got to be a little more exclusive. I stopped inviting people that I wanted to like me. I invited people that I actually hung out with. Parties were no longer themed. But the question loomed: what did you serve as an edible candle holder? Even though singing “Happy Birthday” became lame, it had to be sung. Sure, I was a sophisticated grownup who didn’t need to invite everyone to my party, but it wouldn’t feel like a birthday if my friends didn’t sing and I didn’t blow out some candles. A large cake was no longer appropriate, but I couldn’t give my friends pie.
My Dad came up with the perfect solution: ice cream cake. Ice cream cake takes all of the wonderful things in ice cream and all the wonderful things in cake and creates something new and glorious. It improves upon both foods. This is one reason mint chocolate chip ice cream cake isn’t all that great. It doesn’t really improve on mint chocolate chip ice cream. The best ice cream cake is a vehicle for M&M’s and chocolate syrup and nuts and any manner of delicious sweet thing that defies logical explanation. Plus, ice cream cakes are light on the icing, which is the most over-rated part of any party cake. And so my birthday parties evolved.
Then college hit. My roommate’s girlfriend baked me a cake my sophomore year, but college spelled the end of birthday party cakes—ice cream or otherwise. My Mom sent me Jewish apple cakes in the mail, and I even got a pie when my family drove up to visit my first year away, but homemade birthday apple pie/cake is something separate from birthday party cake. Apple pie is love. Party cake is frivolity. And that’s probably why party cake ceased to be; it got replaced with party liquor and beer. Like love, though, apple pie is here to stay.
1 Comment
September 23, 2009 at 5:09 am
hey!
yep I have watched it actually, love monty python lots
and thanks for the video!