A friend was telling me the saddest little tale the other day, and it went something like this:
“My Sunday was right out of a Dickens’ novel,” said my friend. “You know, the best of times, and the worst of times. It started out so nice, with my friend Lynn and I taking a fantastic hike out in nature on trails that my father used to love. There was even this newly designed pedestrian bridge that took us over a lovely stream, and it was almost like heaven standing on it and looking out at all the beautiful countryside. Plus, Lynn owns a wonderful little art gallery and is always meeting such interesting people, so it is great fun to spend time with her and to listen to her stories.
“Anyway,” she continued, “when I returned to my house I was in a really good mood and decided I would finally get started on the one little chore I had been putting off all weekend. You see, where I work, there is this rather silly tradition of baking homemade cookies for our co-workers when they have a birthday. I’ve never been a big fan of celebrating birthdays at work to begin with, and I have no idea how this particular tradition got started. I mean, just wish me a happy birthday and I’m fine. And at my age, it would actually be nice if everyone would just simply forget all about my birthday. But for whatever reason, this particular tradition still seems to have plenty of life in it, even though most of my co-workers no longer bake. In fact, of the nine women I work with, only my manager, Nicky, and I still bake. And as you can imagine, nine different birthdays come up pretty regularly. Plus, Nicky, being the sweetheart she is, insists on baking everyone’s favorite thing, and that can lead to a lot of time, effort and expense. I have often thought about telling my co-workers that enough is enough, but that only means that Nicky would end up doing all the baking herself, and I can’t stand seeing someone being taken advantage of like that.”
“So, even though I was very tired from my long hike with Lynn, I got up off the couch, went out into my kitchen, turned on my oven to pre-heat it, and got started on the batter. Twenty minutes later, while taking a little break to do a load of laundry, I started smelling something burning. Oh, no, I thought to myself, I bet I forgot to remove the plastic and metal electric grill out of the oven where I usually store it. Suddenly, this horrible smelling smoke was everywhere in the house, and in the kitchen, it was so dense I could hardly make my way back in there. Plus, it was that incredible burning plastic smell that makes you cough and feel like you’re being aphyxiated. Anyway, coughing my lungs out and feeling like one of those World War One soldiers must have felt after being gassed, I somehow managed to find my hot mitts and open the oven door, only to discover that the remains of my grill – having thoroughly baked at 375 degrees – was oozing all over the rack, with the majority of it having settled down into a puddle of really gross-looking primordial stuff at the bottom of the poor oven. It actually kind of looked like that famous Salvador Dali painting of melting clocks.
“So, I very carefully took my now mostly liquid grill and the rack it was dripping from out of the oven and in a panic threw them into my plastic garbage can, where they quickly fused together and became one. Then I sat down at my kitchen table, took my hot mitts off, which were covered in plastic ooze, and just stared at my oven in disbelief. I’m not usually a Calamity Jane, but it was quickly obvious to me that this was one of those kinds of messes that can never be completely cleaned up. Already the plastic inside my stove was crackling and cooling and I knew the black wisps of plastic were now permanently affixed to my oven walls. I gave the whole disaster some serious thought and decided that the only way to get it off was to heat the stove up again, but since I never wanted that awful smell to return for a repeat performance, my only real option was to go out and buy myself a brand-new stove, which I knew wasn’t going to be cheap. And all this because of a silly work tradition that had long outgrown its stay on this earth!”
I called my friend a few days later to see if she was over her cookie baking depression and asked her how she liked her new stove.
“I guess a stove is a stove,” she said, “and at least the house doesn’t smell so awful anymore. But I still can’t stop thinking about how often really terrible things seem to happen when you’re just trying to do a good deed. Plus, I’m also still trying to find a moral to this story. Any suggestions?”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know about a moral to the story, but I do have a little suggestion for you in the future.”
“What’s that?” she asked with interest.
“Store-bought cookies!”