The social awkwardness of not liking cake

After several years of expressing the opinion that I'm an over-sensitive flower of a person who should just suck it up, the Boy Wonder has recently conceded that it is socially awkward not to like cake. I just don't like it, never have and probably never will. It's not as though it makes me want to throw up, but of all the ways to ingest an unhealthy number of calories that exist in the world, cake is a long way down my preferred list.

We went to a birthday party a couple of weeks ago at the end of which was produced an incredible looking cake. Three layers, three types of filling/icing and a host of exquisite decorations made from two types of chocolate.  The sight of it left everyone entranced, but I had a sinking feeling which was only shaken when the chef realised that it contained nuts. I was relieved that I wouldn't have to eat any, and surprised that for once my nut allergy had actually helped me out a little.

Unfortunately, the moments when I am glad of my allergies are few and far between as I have often been confronted with a cake specially acquired to accommodate my dietary needs, making it even more impossible to refuse a slice. That night, after we had returned from the party, the Boy Wonder and I were talking about the incident and how he had been pleased on my behalf when the cake was revealed to be a potential killer, at which point (having apparently stored up some degree of resentment for his offhand treatment of my mental anguish over the cake situation) I triumphantly pounced on him and forced him to admit that his previous stance was only possible to maintain if you genuinely don't mind offending people.

It is a fairly hollow victory - although it will be nice to have someone to commiserate with when these cake-tastrophes occur, there is no way to avoid them cropping up occasionally (although not working in an office helps) and I have never managed to work out a way of handling them which is genuinely foolproof. Even claiming to be on a diet is inappropriately pious when someone has actually procured a cake for your birthday, so although it does occasionally work (admittedly only on people who have never seen me hoover up a family pack of crisps) there are some situations where you just have to eat some cake and try not to pull a face.

Charity Shop Guilt

For some reason, even though I am quite diligent about what I will and won't take to charity shops, I still always feel a little bit guilty whenever I take stuff in there. This is in part due to the fact that by the time I actually get round to taking things down to the shop, they have been piling up in the house for weeks, and I'm thrilled at the idea of not having to look at them any more. However, I think it's partly due to the fact that I always half expect them to take a glance through the stuff in the bags and shout 'But this is just a load of old crap that you don't want!' and make me take it all home again.

Because of the way I was brought up (saving milk bottle tops to buy guide dogs, cutting out used stamps to buy...well guide dogs again - heaven knows what the damn dogs are doing with all the stamps and foil, but my guess is mailing some kind of robot to the moon) I am quite fastidious about recycling wherever possible. When the zip stopped working on my coat, I just held it together for two years on the grounds that 95% of the coat was still doing its job perfectly well, and it seemed a shame to get rid of it. So the charity shop only ever gets goods of reasonable quality that could offer plenty of use to someone else, but because I don't want them I feel as though I am using the charity shop as a way of palming off my poor purchasing decisions on some other poor fool who has to store it until someone equally misguided comes along to take it off their hands.

Despite the fact that last week I saw a multi pack of women's knickers in the shop, I still feel as though a box full of unused stationery, some barely-worn clothing and an old picture frame is in some way inappropriate. Fortunately, my desire to de-clutter, when it does rear its ugly head, is so overwhelming it compels me to forget this source of potential awkwardness and sends me off undaunted to the shops complete with bags full of my crap straining at their seams.

My imaginary friends

I have two imaginary friends - one, who is kind of a downer, questions everything I do, and the other, who is a little bit like a puppy, is relentless impressed with my every activity. For example at this moment, the first one is saying

'Are you sure it's a good idea to write about this? People might well think you're mentally ill and medicate me out of existence. And by the way, if you phrased it slightly differently, the punctuation wouldn't be so ambiguous.', while the second one is saying 'Nah - people will think you're delightfully kooky, and it's not like anyone reads this anyway. Not because it's not entertainingly witty of course, just because you're way too modest to tell people to read your blog, which is after all supposed to be an outlet for your thoughts and is only so great to read because your thoughts are naturally hilarious. I say go for it!'

I suppose it's a little like the cartoon angel and devil that pop up occasionally on the shoulders of characters on television, except there is way more moral ambiguity and neither of them seem to necessarily have my best interests (or those of anyone else) at heart.

For example, when we go out to jams here (NOLA), quite often the Boy Wonder will get up to play and not be let off the stage for an hour or more, and the first voice (Grumpog, I call her) always hopes that there won't be anyone we know there, or at least that they will be otherwise occupied and leave me alone. The other voice (Happog) is always looking around for someone to chat to, and encouraging me to strike up a conversation with anyone who catches my eye - I know it's fairly common to have an extrovert and and introvert side, but I'm not sure how common it is to name them, or for them to interfere generally in other aspects of your life.

Perhaps I just listen to them too much, although like me they are both way more likely to be wise after the event and just bang on about how they knew that would happen but I never listen in time. Perhaps they are my way of sharing the blame for some of my most socially awkward moments in an attempt to demonstrate that I'm not alone in my social ineptness, but either way I quite like having the company.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something awkward this way comes...

I go to the doctor's fairly regularly - not that I am at death's door, but I am female which comes with a lot of medical stuff as standard - and I have occasionally come across the strange social scenario in which you meet someone you know whilst at the doctors. I've never really got a handle on what you can say - even the classic 'How are you?' seems inappropriate when you're speaking to someone who's either visiting a doctor or accompanying someone to the doctor. A normally innocuous question is sudddenly offensively intrusive when asked at the doctor's, and once you've not asked how someone is, there aren't really any other questions which can be safely asked in the knowledge that the person might be about to receive devastating news, or even just have to wee in a pot or endure some stranger rummaging around in their pants as 'routine'. Then there's a whole range of follow up awkwardness, where you don't want to mention to anyone else that you've seen the person at the doc's but at the same time feel like you're being slightly deceptive especially if you don't know what they were in for in the first place. In short, I would prefer it if everyone agreed that we are all strangers at the surgery - I don't want to be in the waiting room with an unpleasantly warm tube of piss trying to hold it in such a way that a casual acquaintance can't work out what's in it; I don't want to put myself through these paroxysms of social etiquette only to have my toolish neighbour come barrelling up to me and start trying to guess what I'm there for (no, really - he did this once); and I don't want to end up staring into the middle distance (because they don't seem to have magazines any more, presumably due to the risk of cross-infection) trying not to look at someone I vaguely know because I don't want to be intrusive only to then wonder whether they think I'm rude for not asking how they are.