Cheesecake

First of all, I looked up “cheesecake” on Google images and this picture is one of the first that came up. If anyone can tell me what beach balls, a Vespa scooter, and a scantily clad woman have to do with cheesecake, you will get a prize. I can guarantee you that woman does not eat cheesecake and never has in her entire life. She might have taken a bite once, but I bet she threw it up. Also, it is unsafe to ride a Vespa scooter without footwear. At any rate, that’s what you get when you Google “cheesecake images”.

The first time I had cheesecake I was about 16 or 17. I went with my manager and assistant manager, and possibly some other people but I don’t remember, to…Olive Garden? I don’t remember where. All I know is that I ate fancy pasta and had cheesecake for dessert….and then spent the next two days throwing up. There was no doubt in my mind that it was absolutely the fault of the cheesecake that I was sick. I was extremely angry and vowed never to eat cheesecake again.

This leads us to a time in my youth when I ate Pigs in a Blanket and the next day developed strep throat. Guess what I never ate again? Obviously you don’t need a million years of medical school to figure out that Pigs in a Blanket cause strep throat.

Time passed, and I still have not eaten Pigs in a Blanket. I have, however, had strep throat since then, but I’m pretty sure it’s the lingering effects of the Pigs in a Blanket I ate when I was 6. I have eaten cheesecake. It took me a really, really long time. I think the first time I ate cheesecake was about two years ago, so that would be about 18 years with no cheesecake. To make up for what I missed, I have eaten a lot of cheesecake since then.

It is 2am, so I thought, hey, I should eat some cheesecake. I went downstairs and there happened to be one piece of cheesecake in the refrigerator. I didn’t know where it came from, but I didn’t care. My mom was in at her usual post, in front of the computer playing games on Pogo.com, so I said, “HEY. Is this cheesecake spoken for?” For the record, if the answer were “yes”, I would have cleverly cut off part of the cheesecake, making the piece smaller, but not noticeably smaller, and I would have eaten some anyway with no one being any the wiser. But the cheesecake was not spoken for, so instead I ate the whole thing, standing up in the kitchen out of my mother’s view so she could not judge me.

“Why are you standing up like a hobo? Sit down. It drives me crazy when you stand there eating standing up. And you never reheat anything”, said my mom.

“Cheesecake is not meant to be reheated” I responded.

“That was not my point, you look like you are about to take off running, sit down. Why do you take everything so literally?”

I didn’t sit down. I also misplaced all of the punctuation in the preceding sentences, and I don’t really care.

I never sit when I eat, I stand in the kitchen and get in people’s way. And it’s true, I don’t reheat things. It’s hard to believe, but I actually don’t eat frequently, so when I do, I want it IMMEDIATELY, so I just take something out of the refrigerator and eat it standing up. I’ve been called a hobo, a person with no class, a fugitive and quite a few other things, but nothing can deter me from eating while standing up in the kitchen. My lack of reheating things applies to cans of Chef Boyardee as well. Straight out of the can, no bowl necessary. I do use a fork, though, and not my hands, which I feel gives me some level of class.

I have been known to stab things with a fork, not cut them, and bite at them off the fork rather than put it on a plate and cut it like a normal human. I am unable to think of an example right now of what I’ve done this with. A sandwich isn’t really a good example because I do not eat sandwiches with forks. A potato. There you go. I will stab an entire potato and gnaw off of it like a hamster rather than put it on a plate, put it in the microwave, sit down and eat it with a knife and fork.

I have a theory about all this. My people (what do you mean, “you people”) (if you haven’t watched Tropic Thunder, that was lost on you. Also, you should watch it). My people were nomads, I believe. Think of how much this explains. My mom claims the Irish weren’t nomads, and my dad claims his kind of Jews weren’t nomads, they were from Cleveland, but there is some question as to whether or not I’m actually related to these people or not. I have no proof of that. Although I guess my dad is actually the grown up, male version of me, so there’s genetic proof right there. But he’s really good with finances and opening the mail, and I’m not.

Anyway, nomads. So I rock back and forth a lot, right? This is because at any moment, my ancestors may have been attacked, so the rocking motion provided them with good momentum to get a running headstart. If nothing was attacking, then they just rocked, waiting for something to attack.

Standing and eating, same idea. You never know when a wild boar or a member of an enemy tribe (perhaps the Jews or the Irish?) were going to attack, so if you were standing in the middle of your caveman kitchen, eating a potato off a fork and rocking back and forth, you were in the ideal position to take off running and still have your potato with you when you are ready to stop running.

Survival of the fittest. And everyone thinks I do these things because *I* am not the normal one. We’ll see about that when Armageddon comes and I’m the only one with a potato, running fast enough to escape the four horsemen because I had a headstart by rocking. Won’t you be sorry then?!

Let’s not even start with the fact that I now have two weapons – a potato and a fork. And if I don’t need weapons, I will plant the potato and rebuild society by growing potato shrubs. Or trees. Or whatever. What do potatoes grow on? Do they even grow or were they scientifically manufactured? Are they like crackers or like oranges? Potato trees, that is not something I’ve heard of too often. I’m not too sure about potato shrubs. ANYWAY, I will have one and whoever is left after Armageddon will have to make me their King because I will have the fork and the potato treeshrubbush.