Feeding the children

Sometimes I play Mother and feed the 'children' at work. Today a chocolate cake with a whisky frosting. I blush: it's cake out of a box. And then the frosting was icing sugar, good cocoa and 12 year old Scotch. Ha! The cake was timely, apparently, as some of the children didn't want to play together and had to be bribed.

When I was very little I had a friend - "friend" - named Charne - stress on the e, like "ay" Human (where is she now)? She came to play for a few weeks in a row, on what day of the week, I forget. But my mom would buy chocolate boxcake for us and supervise the mixing and baking, and soon we would eat the results. One day my mom forgot the boxcake. Like a good hostess I fessed up to Charne immediately at the front door, whence her mother had walked her from their car. No cake today, I said. Charne turned on her heel, with her mom holding her hand, took the long walk back up the garden path, through the doors in the wall, and out of my playdate life.

I've been feeding my friends ever since.