My mom was having a big birthday party for me! Including a genuine, honest-to-goodness bakery cake! In our family that was quite a treat because all birthday cakes began with Betty Crocker, and ended with some yucky decorating frosting that came out of a tube. But a bakery cake? Never. Those rare treats were only enjoyed at graduation parties, wedding receptions, or some other very special occasion.
But not that year…
I believe it was for my fifteenth birthday. It was the same year that I had a crush on a handsome, talented singer … and I wrote awful, mushy, sickeningly sweet stuff about him in my diary – often.
That paled though, in light of the cake, and the fact that most of our extended family would be coming to the house for my birthday.
I waited on pins and needles for Mom to get home from the bakery with my cake, and shadowed her every move until she set the large box on the counter, opened the lid, and we read,
Happy Birthday, Krispy
What?
Krispy!
Clearly whoever took the phone order had been in desperate need of hearing aids. Being a hormonal teenager, I nearly cried in humiliation. The cake needed to be returned … or the party cancelled. Neither option was meant to be. Mom simply took a butter knife from the silverware drawer and carefully removed the ‘py’ so the cake now read, ‘Happy Birthday, Kris.’
Now it’s not that I’m a stranger to the nickname, but for as long as I can recall, I wouldn’t need all five fingers on one hand to count the number of times people have called me Kris in any given year. However…it did beat Krispy all to pieces.
Unfortunately, the cake went down a notch or two in the special department.
Fast forward a few hours…
All of the guests have arrived and are having a good time, enjoying the ruined cake, as well as all of the good company (I have a very cool family). About then, from the open stairway, I hear some familiar words being recited … at the top of my oldest younger brother’s lungs. He and three male cousins had sneaked into my bedroom, found my diary … and were announcing to everyone that I was in love with the singer.
Definitely a birthday to remember.
Fortunately, through the years, people have forgotten about the diary part of that day. On the other hand, I still haven’t managed to live the whole cake thing down. I blame my sister for this because she, her husband and their sons continue to call me Krispy.
But that’s okay. I can be very patient. Someday an opportunity will present itself and then it will be time for paybacks. (Psst…not really. I just know she sometimes reads my blog and want to make her sweat a bit, so let’s keep this our little secret, okay?)
What was the most humiliating experience during your teenage life? Because we all know that humiliation between the ages of twelve and twenty is always the worst we’ll ever experience, right? 🙂
