Birthday cake

	Birthday cake
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I had two friends over before my birthday last week, plus Celia who couldn't come until supper time. The three of us girls had a good time, I guess, despite Mom embarrassing me in front of them. Sometimes she's just so uncool.

It started just after my friends arrived. Suzie was being so cool and stuck up, like she's not really, but she practices with us so she can do it right when she wants to play hard to get for some guy. She's so funny. Mini, well, we call her Mini this week, but her real name's Cleo, which confuses people sometimes, like teachers and parents. Last week she was Rollie, spelt "ie", not "y". Mini was talking about the new store in the mall, with the "Brolly" new pants with Brittany Spears' face on each leg in sparkle stars. "Brolly" is a bit like "cool" but only refers to things that have high style, not that it really matters.

So like, Mini was telling about the store and how the sales girl reacted when Mini ran out in the mall and dragged me in while she was trying on a pair of jeans that she hadn't paid for yet. And Suzie was being like, not impressed, and I was ROFL and that's when Mom opened the door of my room and like let in a draft of parental reality.

She'd put the birthday cake in the oven and she was going out for something and could I check every 15 minutes and like make sure it was OK?

Like sure, Mom, anything you say. Sure. She looked at me funny like she's not sure if I'm adopted or on drugs, which I'm not and never will be. I smile back, my best innocent, you can trust me, I'm your only daughter smile, and she smiled back and the door closed.

Suzie and Rollie, errr, Mini are looking at me holding it in with their breath and Mom's footsteps go down the stairs and they can't hold it any longer and we laugh and laugh and laugh and everything's OK. Mini goes on with her story and Suzie drops her cool and laughs with us and tells a story about a guy she went to a movie with and he put his hand on her back and started fiddling with her bra and she put her hand on his back and reached down and he's wearing droopy Phat leg jeans and his ginch is showing so she has no trouble grabbing them and he thinks she's enjoying what he's doing so he smiles at her and she blows bubble gum in his face and pulls slowly up until he realizes what she's doing and stops fiddling with her bra so she gives his wedgie a final tug. He behaves himself for the rest of the date and she has to tell him to kiss her when they get to her place, cause he's a sweet guy usually and she wants to keep him guessing.

And then Mini says "The cake?".

And I say "What?"

And she says "It must be 15 minutes." so we go downstairs and as soon as we open the door we know it's more than 15 minutes because we can smell smoke and just them Mom opens the front door and says "Oh, shit" like she wasn't even a holier-than-thou parent.

When she opens the oven we all crowd around and the cake has boiled over the side of the pan and dropped on the element and it's actually got flames on it. Suzie says "Wow" without a trace of cool. Mom's the cool one. She turns off the oven and blows out the flames. Then she takes out the cake and just looks at it from all sides for a few seconds. It's obviously not done cooking. Then she grabs an old steel egg flipper and scoops out all the burnt cake from the oven and wipes the last of it off the element with a damp cloth. She puts the cake back in the oven and turns it back on as if nothing was wrong.

Then she looked at me with a frown. And didn't say a thing for what felt like hours. I was so embarrassed. I mean, it's my birthday and she's going to give me a lecture in front of my friends. It was just totally nerve wracking. I finally couldn't stand it. I looked down and pushed at the floor with my toe. And then she spoke.

"Your birthday cake will probably be OK, although it may taste a bit burnt. The cake in the pan was hardly scorched at all." She looked at her watch and then at me and continued to speak in a perfectly normal voice: no irony, no "I'm ashamed of you", no sarcasm.

"I have to pick up your other friend Celia now. Can you watch the cake? If it overflows again, just clean up the mess like I did, and put it back in. Okay?"

My friends were looking as if they were going to burst again, but I wasn't feeling funny at all. "I'll watch it, Mom."

And I did. We all stayed right in the kitchen until Mom brought Celia back. And I looked at the cake about twice a minute. It didn't overflow again, it just slowly turned a nice shade of brown. And when she brought out the birthday cake after the dinner, what with the icing and all, you couldn't even tell it'd been burnt. I guess it was a pretty good party. And Mom wasn't really uncool at all.

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