The Cupcake Encounter

Day 1 of my writing-for-a-month challenge:

You know how there are some stories that are just a little too humiliating to laugh at?  Well, I have a ridiculous bunch of those waiting to be told.  If anyone who reads this has the same sadistic humor that I do, you will appreciate the fact that it happened to someone else.

We moved back to Utah in June.  I was an unfamiliar face among the neighbors, and thought I would try and get to know them a bit more by taking over miniature cupcakes.  This was the first time I used our little mini cupcake maker since I bought it on a whim a couple years ago.  They looked perfectly round, and smelled lovely.  I made frosting, and our little family headed out to deliver them to a couple of families I had met in passing. 

Neither my husband nor I had any idea in exactly which townhome one of these families lived.  Only that they were somewhere in our general vicinity.  After spending the last several years in Lawrence, Kansas, I had forgotten that everyone and their dog owns a double stroller.  SO, when we came across a home with two little ride-on toys and a double jogger sitting outside the front door, I just knew we had reached our destination. 

I knocked on the door, confident that I would come face-to-face with the mother of three boys, two of which were my kid’s age.  Instead, a man I didn’t know answered the door.  Four kids came streaming out onto the sidewalk, gazing longingly at the plate of four little cupcakes I was holding. 

“Um… You are not who I thought you were,” I said stupidly.  (Josh was standing behind me, and I think this is the part where he put his hand to his forehead.) 

The guy didn’t say anything, but looked like having someone deliver cupcakes by accident—not enough to feed the family—was worse than opening the door to Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

Since no one was about to dig me out of my own verbal disaster, I handed him the plate.  “We wanted to meet our neighbors.  We are the Kirkmans.” 

“Thanks.  We are the Hansons (name changed here;).”  Awkwardly, we turned on our heels and went home.  Josh had the decency to not say anything… Until I said, “Well I feel stupid.”  He agreed, and then suggested that maybe we look up the address of the people I had intended the cupcakes for.

After delivering the goodies to the right home, I came home and attempted to drown my humiliation in the sweet goodness of confectionary perfection.  Up until this point, my kids had been the only recipients of them.  To my dismay, the bite was mostly goo. 

In my rush to get the treats delivered before bedtime, I didn’t read the instructions.  It makes sense that if it looks done on the outside, it’s done all the way through.  I wanted to bawl.  But my throat was too clogged from cupcake batter to muster up tears.  Instead I texted the mom of 3 boys with a profuse apology. 

This was her response: “Oh really?!  I thought it was crème filled!” 

It was nice of her to think so...or at least nice of her to lie about it.