You are what (desserts) you eat

I don’t like chocolate.

Let me clarify: I don’t like chocolate the food, not the ethnicity. Geez.

I didn’t think I needed to specify that, EVER, except one Valentine’s day, a former co-worker — a middle aged African American man, and the office’s resident creeper who hit on everyone — put a Hershey’s Kiss on my desk and when I said, “Oh, I don’t like chocolate,” he made an elaborate, embarrassing display of grabbing his heart and telling me never to say that again.

Everybody in the adjoining office cubes stared at me.

I said louder, “THE FOOD! I DON’T LIKE CHOCOLATE THE FOOD! IT’S TOO BITTER!”

He grabbed his heart again and told me that made it worse.

I then told him thank you, and threw the kiss in the garbage can.

(I didn’t say that if it was a white chocolate kiss, then we’d be in business. Uh, no offense. Ha.)

(And, actually, white chocolate isn’t really chocolate, it’s just sugar and milk. That's the only thing I learned when I toured the chocolate museum in Barcelona, Spain. I hardly sampled anything.)

My chocolate repulsion doesn’t make me a popular person to split dessert with (Molten lava cake?? How about a nice lemon bar instead??)

Also, people in the office think I’m being an annoying skinny bitch when I refuse a piece of birthday/baby shower/promotion/retirement cake.

“No, I’m not on a diet, I just don’t like chocolate.”

Silence.
Crickets.
Eye rolls.

“MINT chocolate I’ll eat!!” I say, but that doesn’t get me any cool points. Promise.

(on a related note, Don’t f*ck with my Thin Mints!!!)

It’s my birthday coming up, and that means CAAAAAAAKKEEE!!! I decided to be pro-active at the office this week and see if I could influence the type of cake that would bear my name in curly letter frosting.

See, I found out in a most unfortunate way last August that I am the only employee with an April birthday.

So I figured instead of the chocolate MONSTROSITY that we had for the past three months, I could pick my own.

“I would like a cookie cake from the mall,” I wrote in an email to the pertinent people this week.

Silence.
Crickets.
(Probably an eye roll.)

No one responded.
But today, on the way to the bathroom, I was intercepted.

“What do you mean a cookie cake from the mall?” the person in charge of things like birthday cake asked me.

“The mall! The American Cookie Company,” I said. “It’s in the food court!”

“You know," she said. "The grocery store has a cookie cake."

Silence.
Crickets.
Almost an eye roll.

“But the mall cake is…better,” I said, trying my best to look pathetic so she’ll feel bad for me and get the EFFING COOKIE CAKE FROM THE MALL. “People will love it!”

She said she’d “see what she could do,” because she usually picks up a cake on the way to work and the mall isn’t open at 8 a.m.

I mentally noted that if this was The Office, Michael Scott would have the party planning committee absolutely get me my cookie cake from the (Steamtown) mall.

“Well, go get the cake at lunch! Go shopping!” I enticed her.

I then offered to go pick up my own damn cake if it means it won’t be chocolate with strawberry filling. BLECH!

So, now two weeks and counting to my birthday, I have now re-routed all my energy into making sure I get an acceptable cake.

I hope my choice doesn’t offend anyone (Well, anyone who feels as though they are made of chocolate.)

It certainly won’t offend me, because now that I think about it, a cookie cake is pretty much a BLONDIE.

JUST LIKE ME!!!
DELICIOUS!!!

Maybe I’ll ask for a side of crackers too.

-Jenny