A Lesson Learned

I once baked a white cake with strawberry icing. I had chosen it as something that was supposed to turn out perfectly like the one on the cover of the box. It was one of my first baking experiences and probably a poor choice for, I believe, white cakes tend to be prone to cracking, their consistency being so light. Mine did. It cracked right down the center and as I tried by all means possible to fill in the crack, it just got wider.

My mother, hearing sighs of painful disappointment emanating from the kitchen, came to add guidance from the sidelines by making suggestions for how to fix the compromised cake which to me just made it's failure that much worse. In a fit of anger, I took the knife I was frosting with, stuck it straight down through the cake center and gave it a good shove from side to side splattering globs of icing, chunks of cake and crumbs all over the kitchen. It was such a shock to my mom that she was speechless for a minute before a lecture about rash actions and temper ensued and what I would have to do as punishment was discussed. I learned a lesson that day that has been lifelong about how acting in anger is usually not a wise thing to do.

A moment of glorious relief from obliterating the problem and getting back at things when they don't go right was not worth the time I had to spend cleaning up afterward and the reputation I got for being a bit toward the edge of the sane range that followed.