The socialites

Last night, Susan and I went to Sam's to stock up on important things like peanut butter before our membership expires. We were trolling for samples when we passed a wonderful looking orange lemon cream cheese cake. There was a woman standing nearby, and I said, "Hey, you wanna split this?" She laughed and noted how good Sam's cakes were. She related how in the past couple of weeks, her husband had a birthday. She made a great meal, gave him birthday sex, (!?—do people talk about this in public? to strangers?) but he was pouty because he didn't get a cake. That was evidently the only thing that makes a birthday. She got a cheap, but yummy, decadent cake from Sam's, and everything was cool.

Another couple had walked by and been part of the conversation about splitting the cake. We saw them later and the man said, "So, do you want to split the cake?" We said yes, and he asked the bakery if they would do the splitting for us. They wouldn't, but they gave us an extra container to do the splitting ourselves. After the other guy paid (and I ponied up the eight bucks), we went to the snack bar to see if they could give us a splitting implement. I thought we were going to be stuck with plastic knives, but they gave us a pizza platter! So the guy split the cake with it, and used the platter to move our four-pound half-cake to our container. There was a guy nearby with his kids shaking his head, marveling at us. I think he was jealous because we had beat the consumerist system.

There was another beneficiary: The woman at the snack bar had wanted to try one of those cakes, but didn't want to buy a whole one. She got to sample the residue from the pizza platter!

Kinda crazy splitting a cake with total strangers. Thanks, Troy and Dana!