From the 15 Year Old Lawn Chair...

You Can’t Eat Your Soul Mate (Unless You’re a Spider)

Have you ever felt an emotional attachment to the product of your first solo culinary experience? Such as the first “acceptable” pancake after a long line of “mess-ups.” What the inexperienced chef doesn’t realize, and I count myself as one, is experience doesn’t mean perfection. My dear father is a pancake master and it matters not to him if the pancakes are of different sizes. Me and my naïve culinary perfectionism would squirm when flipping the pancakes insufficiently. The thin crispy appendages sometimes made would give me unrest. And then it came: the perfect, limbless pancake. I was overjoyed enough to christen the pancake with a lasting name, but was already worried about the next pancake. Would it come out as perfectly? Would this fresh flawless flatbread be the first and last of its kind? No. The next one came out just as wholesome and complete as the one before it.
At the urgings of my father, also standing as Pancake Master Matthew that day, I was to save the last pancakes for myself. The final dribbles of batter in the bowl were to be mine. I was perfectly fine with that. My two circles of perfection were put aside in a place of honor to be saved for later. Later came and went with the arrival of my mother back from Roanoke with another homemade delicacy: cheese straws. Crispy, yummy, light, and cheesy are the qualifications of the cheese straw, but preferences vary. In light of the new snack, my pancakes were forgotten.
The next morning, this morning, I staggered out of bed, bandied words of inspiration with my mother, and set about thinking of brunch. It was already eleven o’clock in the morning so it couldn’t be too breakfasty. I opened the fridge and spotted them, the pancakes, plain as day in a plastic bag, set atop a container of Parmesan cheese. My pride from the day before rushed back and I gazed at them fondly before I realized I was standing with the fridge door open, a big no-no in my household. I closed the door and turned around. Lo and behold, the box of cheese straws. I was in a fix. Cheese straws or pancakes? Pancakes or cheese straws? A truly impossible puzzle. Into the kitchen walked the Master of Pancakes himself, my father. I posed my dilemma to him and the conversation that followed went something like this:

Me: “Well, do you want the pancakes?”

He shook his head.

Me: “All right, I’ll have the cheese straws.”

He laughed and said: “I said I didn’t want the pancakes!”

Me (rather defensively): “Well…!”

Him: “Oh, the poor, poor pancakes. They don’t feel loved.”

I was ready to hug the pancakes to prove my love of them, but I contented myself with scooping cheese straws onto a paper plate with a stunningly superior expression. As I nibbled on my chosen provision, I puzzled over a snappy comeback, fully aware that it was going to be ten or fifteen minutes late. I conversed some more with my father, indignance running high, until he announced that he was going to eat the pancakes. I was so distraught that all previous comeback ideas melted away and I had to start at square one. But this go 'round there was a time limit: I had to come up with one before he finished eating the pancakes. In a fit hysteria, I squeaked, “But they were my soul mates!”
My first perfect pancakes were lost to an expert chef. It was during a period of mourning that I realized: he did that on purpose. He purposefully ate my immaculate pancakes to show me their insignificance. I could always make another, perhaps one even better. Now, because of the brilliance of the Pancake Master, the novelty of pancake perfection will never wear thin due to the impending doom of consumption. Each time I will have to start over at square one and each time will feel like a success. And each perfect pancake, no matter how many are made over a lifetime, will always be something to be proud of.