Every week, Danny M. Lavery and Nicole Cliffe discuss a Prudie letter. This week: the cake tug-of-war.
Nicole Cliffe: The social compact is breaking all around us!!
A of all she took the whole cake which is BONKERS and b of all you cannot actually tell someone to take a smaller slice of cake
But then she did push the LW’s roommate over to intervene in the cake slicing
I wish I had been at this very exciting party!
And then the cake HITS THE GROUND
whatever the opposite of physical distancing is, this is it
Daniel Lavery: My only question for the LW is: “Was it worth it?”
Nicole Cliffe: I mean if she HAD “chilled” I think likely things would have gone better
Daniel Lavery: “Is your current strategy paying off? Are you getting what you want? Are you having a good time?”
the LW both under- and overreacted in the worst possible combination of reactions
the important things were 1. Emily was drunk and ignoring her kid so that other people had to make sure he wasn’t running out into a busy street and 2. Your brother brought strangers to a supposedly “socially distant” party that was intended to be relatively low-risk in the middle of a pandemic
the unimportant part was that she took some cake
the LW underreacted to 1 and 2 and then went absolutely nuclear over number 3
Nicole Cliffe: I’m Canadian so I just am primed to let things happen around me without doing anything until a whole cake is taken and therefore I do understand that
Although I also would have not chased down the cake
I would have simply found a chair and stared into the middle distance and pondered the unimaginable
What I do think is that this woman’s relationship with your brother is unlikely for them to end up in matching bathtubs on a hill in an erectile dysfunction ad
Daniel Lavery: okay I definitely don’t recommend THAT as a strategy
Nicole Cliffe: so I would not bother to fight her existence to the death
and instead focus on “don’t bring random people to my private pandemic parties going forward”
Daniel Lavery: yeah, your best options were to either say at the outset “I’m sorry, but you can’t come in; we haven’t prepared for this many people in the house and I can’t accommodate this safely”
which may have felt difficult to say, but you really do have to develop contingency plans in a pandemic where you’re trying to reduce the risk of transmission
or once she got drunk and the kid started running off, asked them to leave
Nicole Cliffe: that seems right
Daniel Lavery: and if your brother says “just chill” then you have to hold the line and insist
it’s uncomfortable and unpleasant, to be sure! I wouldn’t want to do it either
Nicole Cliffe: i’m just…in shock
Daniel Lavery: but transferring all that frustration to the cake just made things worse
Nicole Cliffe: things went badly slowly and then all at once
Daniel Lavery: also, you cannot use her bad behavior to keep justifying your own deathlike relentless on getting a replacement cake
you’re never going to get a cake replacement
your brother is never going to venmo you that 50 bucks
Nicole Cliffe: once you’re arm wrestling a person for a cake in front of a child, things have gone off course very demonstrably
Daniel Lavery: you can either accept it and let it go or fight with him about the cake from now until the hereafter
Nicole Cliffe: Oh absolutely not
Daniel Lavery: and I say that as someone who really enjoys a good birthday cake
Nicole Cliffe: I know you do! Your wedding cake was the best I have ever had.
Daniel Lavery: Emily and your brother behaved objectively badly, but it doesn’t mean you weren’t out of line either
Nicole Cliffe: It’s a real Sliding Doors situation, I can see moments where things could have been resolved but I think that once you let them in it was going to be a race to the bottom
and the LW could not possibly have known that
Daniel Lavery: right
but you need to decide to let it go
and that doesn’t mean “let Emily do whatever she wants,” to be clear
you can absolutely say “I’m not having her over again”
and hold firm there
Nicole Cliffe: I think that is the path I would choose
Daniel Lavery: but you’ve asked for an apology and a replacement, they’ve said no, and you just have to let that one go, rather than going back to the well of “everyone in our family is appalled by what happened”
Nicole Cliffe: but I would not expect to be repaid bc it’s not happening and I would not be like I SHALL NEVER FORGIVE HER bc that’s histrionic and pointless
Daniel Lavery: don’t call up your uncle and demand a second exhibition of shock and outrage on your behalf
Nicole Cliffe: you can just maintain the boundary of your hearth
yeah none of that is going to help things
this is not a theological schism
Daniel Lavery: Emily sucks, your brother is not going to break up with her on your behalf, you can keep your distance from her but stop trying to get a cake out of her
Nicole Cliffe: it also was paid for by the roommate who is not demanding fifty dollars
Daniel Lavery: and your brother and his girlfriend didn’t “ruin your birthday,” they acted badly on your birthday
that’s an important distinction
Nicole Cliffe: or the LW would have mentioned that
I am going to disagree this time!
Daniel Lavery: you can still go watch a fun movie or make a box Funfetti cake with your boyfriend
Nicole Cliffe: I do think they ruined her birthday.
And I generally do not believe in the ruination of holidays
but this is a ruined birthday, in my book
It’s okay, you get one every year
Daniel Lavery: also they’re fake!
Nicole Cliffe: You just don’t need to ruin your year over it
Daniel Lavery: call today your birthday
light a candle
celebrate right now
Nicole Cliffe: I support this
I am actually like “could the arrival of a Babadook have made this situation worse” and I think the answer is yes so I acknowledge that things did not descend into quite the level of outer darkness
and hitting the reset w your roommate and a friend is an excellent idea
Daniel Lavery: in future conflicts, save your energy for important interventions like “child safety” or “COVID transmission risk” and don’t transfer your frustration into “cake slice size”
“your kid can’t have a big slice of cake” is the wrong hill to die on
you had several better hills to make a stand on
Nicole Cliffe: it absolutely is, it was a bad turning point
Danny I am just PROCESSING
all of the things that happened
and not in a sitcom
Daniel Lavery: this is relatively besides the point but I never really understand what people mean when they say something is “too rich”
Nicole Cliffe: IT’S BULLSHIT
THANK YOU
“IT’S VERY GOOD, step back”
my father makes this fettuccine Alfredo once every ten years bc “it’s too rich”
what does that even mean
who is the arbiter
if we ate it once a year would we develop gout?
I can neither imagine pushing past the cake-slicing person and insisting on cutting my own piece NOR can I imagine telling a guest, however uninvited, that they have taken too much cake when they have taken a SINGLE SLICE
Daniel Lavery: yes, it’s incredibly rude to shoulder past someone who’s slicing up a birthday cake to grab the biggest slice
but the answer to that isn’t to say, “put it back and take this little piece, your son will keel over if he eats the Forbidden Slice” either
at any rate, I think we’ve learned all we can from this birthday-party autopsy
all of you, go forth and sin no more
Nicole Cliffe: yes please
also jeez I hope that kid has some positive role models
Daniel Lavery: I do too
