Peer Pressure

One of those things I remember from my (successful) anti-drug education in elementary, middle, and high school was the constant warning of the dangers of peer pressure. The infamous DARE education has worked, at least for me; just not for society in total.

According to my teachers, the most dangerous person who would be likely to lead me into druggie hell was not the man on the street corner, but rather the friends who I hung out with. Consequently I never hung out with any of my friends—I studiously avoided them (and they me), never succumbing to peer pressure. (Of course, since I never hung out with them, I never had any peers to pressure me. Conundrum: aren’t loners the ones who typically go out and shoot-up (different sense of the phrase) their schools? Doesn’t it take groups of kids hanging out and making everybody welcome to avoid drug usage?)

Any how, I bring this up because I find myself baking a cake tonight.

Because I returned from Belgium on Sunday, a day that it is impossible to buy eggs unless you are willing to fork over gas station prices, I was unable to bake a cake to bring to my office for my birthday—the tradition in Germany is for the birthday celebrant to bring their own cake to the office.

Monday I managed to avoid the issue accidentally. I was so intent on finishing the aforementioned State of the Union (despite painfully obvious foreshadowing, it’s a good book with a relevant commentary about life in the States today), that I stayed up far past my regular bedtime. Consequently when the alarm went off, I was barely able to make it out of bed, dropping a line to the German teacher letting her know I couldn’t make it. Fortunately I was able to work at home the rest of the day.

So today, when I got to the office, people immediately asked me where my cake was. Now I never said that I would actually bake a cake, but I left the office with the clear idea that perhaps I would buy the necessary ingredients to bake a cake tonight (eggs, more flour). So I bought the ingredients, came home, made dinner, washed the dishes and then baked an applesauce cake.

I’m happy to report that now the kitchen smells fantastic—and I hope the quality of the cake matches.

I guess that means that tomorrow, two days late, I will be having cake at the office—just after lunch.

Feel free to stop by—and I have to say the peer pressure to bake cakes isn’t so bad. Just stay off the blow.