That Time I Dropped Pie In The Cafeteria (And Other Times My Love For Dessert Humiliated Me)
I love food. I absolutely love it, the way a lot of people love video games or football (and truth be told I love those things too, but that’s beside the point). I especially love dessert, particularly pie. When I graduated from eighth grade I didn’t get a cake; I got pie. I repeated that lovely tradition when I graduated from high school. I have loved, cherished and stuck up for pie throughout my entire life, but truth be told, pie has not always returned the favor.
In fact, it was my junior year of college when pie let me down. It happened during lunch time. Lunch time had to be the busiest time in the cafeteria.
I had finished eating my meal and made my way to the dessert counter where, lo and behold, the cooks were serving cherry pie. I totally believe in using my metabolism while I am still young and have got it, so I dished up a piece of pie and made my way back to my seat. But as I said earlier, the cafeteria was at its busiest, and that pie would never return to my seat with me.
Instead, I got bumped and jostled somewhere along the way, and the pie went tumbling, smacking down onto the ground and, in the process, making a huge mess. People turned and looked. Most of the pie had somehow ended up underneath a man’s chair. My face suddenly felt like it was a million degrees.
I wanted to cry. I felt the tears well up, and so I tried pushing them down, because I couldn’t imagine this scene getting any more embarrassing than if I started crying over spilt pie. The man in the chair turned and glanced down at me, as I was now on my knees attempting to clean up the mess.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I said. What he did next surprised me.
“It’s no big deal,” he said, and then he got down on his hands and knees and finished helping me clean up the mess.
At the end of the day, my pie-spilling incident was not remarkable. Nobody was whispering about it or laughing at me. In fact, moments after the spill took place, everyone returned to their own tables and moved on in their conversations.
I had been so upset about it. I had called my mom relaying the incident to her, which she immediately shook off and told me to do the same. I eventually did (I’m telling the whole Internet the story now).
It took me awhile to realize that my public humiliation was not founded in my klutziness. No, it all goes back to the dessert counter. It all seemed innocent enough. Didn’t it? I said I believed in eating dessert, but I had a lot of friends who didn’t feel that way.
My friends would often make comments like these: “You’re so lucky you can eat like that.” “Oh I already ate dessert this week.” “Didn’t you eat a cookie yesterday?” Even though I’m sure they didn’t mean to, often their comments made me feel self-conscious. I suddenly felt the need to justify my eating habits, to tell my friends that I ate pretty healthily, that I didn’t snack, to list what I had eaten that day as proof.
Every time I got dessert, I felt my face warm. Cookies, cake, brownies and my beloved pie served as my primary form of embarrassment. My love of all things sweet got me criticized on a regular basis.
When the pie fell, a bunch of people could see that I was eating dessert. I assumed they were all criticizing me, and I couldn’t explain to everyone why I was eating it. The man who helped me clean up helped me see past that. He didn’t judge me or make any comments. He just helped me clean up. It was no big deal.
To this day, I still love pie. I’m going to love it and eat it as regularly as possible. When I go get pie now, I do it proudly. I don’t hide my love or make excuses for it.
Pie is meant to be messy, and when it drips down the front of my dress, I know that it’s simply leaving its mark on me as all loved ones do. If you catch me crying over spilt pie now, it is out of loss for the pie. And when I’m done cleaning it up, I’m going to go get another piece.
