They Wouldn't Let Us Eat Cake

Adults are always trying to lay a proverb on us kids, as if they were the greatest pieces of advice you could get.  You've probably heard most of these chestnuts.

"A penny saved is a penny earned."  When even a cup of coffee is a couple of bucks, those saved pennies aren't going to get you too far.  Particularly when the banks aren't paying interest on small accounts anymore.

"First come, first served."  As long as you're "on the list".  Otherwise you'd better be hot.  At least at any club worth getting into.

"Barking dogs seldom bite."  Whoever said that was never chased by the hell hound that lives two houses down from us.  Or even the vicious little fur ball on the other side of the street.

You can probably think of others that don't measure up.  Some are silly, whether they're accurate or not.  Some would be helpful, except they make no sense.  Some make sense, but still aren't helpful.

For example, "you can't have your cake and eat it too".  The message being that if you eat the cake, it's gone.  True enough.  On the other hand, who wants to keep a cake around just to see it go stale.

Now, if you had a magic cake that replenished itself whenever you had a piece, that would be a worthwhile thing.  At least that's what my lab partner, Jake, and I thought.  Not that they were teaching us magic in High School Chemistry, but Mr. McMillan had used the mixing of the ingredients for a cake mix together, followed by an examination of the changes that took place when the cake was baked, to get across ideas on reactions.

Mr. McMillan was actually a pretty cool teacher.  And the cake didn't taste bad.

That evening, Jake and I were warming the bench during the JV basketball game.  We'd made the team, but only got to play as subs.  Our coach, Mr. Dowd, was really someone who laid the proverbs on.  For some reason, that seems to go with the territory of coaching.  Mr. Dowd had used the old "no pain, no gain" on us before the game.

In any event, half way through the second period, Jake turns to me with that wild look in his eye that's gotten us into trouble more then once.

"How'd you like to have your cake and eat it too?" he asked.

"I don't want to hear it Jake," I tried.  "I just don't want to hear it."

Remember that.  I really didn't want to hear it.  You know I said that.

Unfortunately, it was like Jake never heard my objections to his schemes.

"It would be easy." Jake just went right on.  "Mr. McMillan explained how the ingredients reacted with each other when mixed, and how the mixture changed when heated up."

"Yeah," I said, "then we eat it and it's gone."

"Think about it for a minute," Jake said.  "Remember in our Chemistry Textbook, there were descriptions of reactions that generate heat, and reactions that cause an expansion in volume.  Bread making for example, uses yeast to expand the dough."

"A cake mix that bakes itself by generating heat, and expands in volume so that you get a lot of cake from a little mix,"  I said.  "Is that the idea?"

"Yeah," Jake smiled.  "I knew you'd get it."

"We add automated feeds for the ingredients," he continued, "and voila, permanent cake."

If the coach had only put me into the game.  If Jake hadn't been my best friend since fourth grade.  If, if, but with my luck, he hooked me on the idea.

Understand.  Neither of us were fanatical cake eaters.  We could take it or leave it.  It was the challenge of implementing something that would amaze everyone that we loved.

The outcome wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for our next decision.  We decided to create this earth shattering experiment in the High School's Chemistry Lab.  Simple ingredients were available from Mr. McMillan's demonstration.  The equipment needed could be "borrowed".  We managed to convince ourselves that it was the perfect location.

We had access to the school after classes, because of basketball practice, and the AV Club we belonged to.  Yes, AV stands for 'audio visual"; we were nerds.  So sue me.

The first day, we concentrated on setup.  The next day, we ran our first small scale test while practice was underway.  Sneaking back to the lab after practice, we had small pieces of what might have been called cake, to eat.  Needed more sugar, no doubt.

The next night, the results weren't too bad.  We were ready to scale up.

Friday, we setup to let our experiment run over the weekend.  We'd have cake for the entire class come Monday.

That would have been great.  Didn't quite work out that way.

There was an infamous horror movie "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" made in 1978.  I remember seeing it on late night TV a couple of years ago.  It was a laugh riot.

What wasn't a laugh riot was the tale of the "Giant Cake That Ate the High School Science Lab".  At least that's how the local scandal sheet reported it.

No permanent damage.  Jake and I were able to get a couple of buddies to help out in cleaning up the mess.  The powers that be made us dispose of it all.  What a waste.

Made a great story for the annual year book, although we never really got to disprove the old adage about not having your cake and eating it too.  Blame it on the administration.  They wouldn't let us eat any.