If At First You Don't Succeed, Eat Cake!!

One way to guarantee your children grow up to be joyful underachievers is to be that way yourself. The other way is to do everything for them. My parents taught by example. They weren’t the kind to do everything for me. If I didn’t do it for myself, it didn’t get done. And that was alright.

I was raised by a family whose philosophy about success was: “If at first you don’t succeed, have a nice piece of cake and a diet soda”. (Yeah, a diet soda. My family wouldn’t dream of drinking a glass of whole milk but we could eat an entire Sarah Lee cake as long as we washed it down with Tab or some sort of low fat dairy product)

When I was a tyke on my momma’s knee and I tried to master a new motor skill, like attempting to insert my current food source into my own mouth, but dropped my bottle of juice nipple first into the fish bowl instead, a sweet treat was shoved into my wailing pie hole to stop me from feeling the agony of defeat. “Eat this and don’t worry about manual dexterity. Not everybody can be coordinated”. My family was very good at making underachieving a desirable state. An art form, even.

Didn’t make the Pee Wee Semi-Retards softball team? Have a cookie.

You weren’t picked to crown the Our Lady Of Fatima statue? Again? Let’s go get some ice cream.

You still can’t balance your fat ass on a two wheeler at the age of 9? A bag of chips and a grape soda will take away the humiliation of being the only kid in third grade still using training wheels.

And so it went. Bringing home C’s on the report card was totally acceptable. At least it showed a mustard seed level of effort being made in the classroom. If my faith was allowed to be that tiny, why not my IQ?

Mom and Dad both worked in sweaty clothing factories and came home covered in thread and humble pie. Payday was the weekly Holy day for us and usually meant daddy came home with fried flounder and French fries from the local diner for supper. (Italian Catholics, doncha know?) And candy for dessert. And ice cream. And cake. And, yes, diet soda.

The best part of the working year for them was the LAY OFF! Early in the spring, when all the seasonal work was finished, my parents were put on hold until sometime in the summer. Mom would joyfully hit the unemployment office and dad would get a job pumping gas.

So, how would I know how to excel? Or when to stop eating for that matter? My role models never stepped over the mundane, never made waves and certainly never felt the need to do something better. My favorite aunt never passed her driving test. Too much trouble to read the manual and actually REMEMBER the main points of driving. So, she walked herself uptown to the bakery and sugared herself into a state of blissful numbness. And that is how I learned to deal with life-don’t try too hard; you can always eat cake.

So that’s where my career went-to the cake factory. I have contented myself with eating copious amounts of baked flour and sugar instead of setting my sights on a loftier goal.
If I had been raised by doctors, lawyers, politicians or even wolves my life may have turned out better. No use fretting about it now. The past cannot be changed but at least there are more diet beverage choices to go with my cake now.