Cake Wrecks

Dalita Jones.

Poor Dalita Jones (name has been changed to protect the not-so-innocent) has been a legend in our house for years. We met Dalita shortly after we moved to Philadelphia (10 years ago now) and started attending church in a pretty seedy area of North Philly. Correction: it was The Ghetto. Our church met in an old building that was formerly a Jewish mortuary. We had many youth activities out in the hearse garage. We had Sunday School in one of the bedrooms above the chapel. Which room did they use to store the bodies? (shudder) Oh, the stories we could tell.....

Anyway, back to Dalita. Dalita was a classic. She was everything you would expect of someone that lived within walking distance of that church building. Although I never visited her home, I'm sure she lived in a bombed out row home among scores of drug dealers and gang bangers. It was a very, very rough part of town. And poor Dalita was tough as nails. She was a single mom and had to be as mean as they come to live where she lived. Man, she was a piece of work.

For our ward Christmas party that year, we had a service exchange. Everyone listed a service you could provide to someone in the ward on a Christmas tree ornament. Then you would hang your ornament and take another in exchange. How fun and full of Christmas spirit, right?

Dalita picked an ornament from the Bishop's wife. The ornament read that the Bishop's wife would be willing give away a cake. How thoughtful!

Well, a week or two later, Dalita woke up hungry. She called the Bishop's wife on Sunday morning and said she wanted her cake that day and asked if she could bring it to church that afternoon. The Bishop's wife, I'm sure, had to really hustle to get a cake ready so quickly in addition to getting herself and her kids ready for church while her husband was busy with church meetings. But, being full of love and service, she whipped a cake up as fast as her Mormon hands could bake.

Near the end of the meeting, Keith and I heard yelling in the hall. With our church in such a rotten area, and right next door to a Burger King (fries never smelled so good as during a fast Sunday!), we had our fair share of wacky stragglers that ended up hanging out in the foyer. But this sounded different. It was YELLING.

Keith and I walked out into the foyer and witnessed the end of a big, ugly brawl. There was a cake in the garbage can and two scrawny little missionaries were trying to hold back two big North Philly broads from beating the tar out of each other in the foyer of the church.

There was a lot of commotion but I did hear comments from Dalita such as "YOU CALL THIS A CAKE???!?!!!!" and "I DON'T WANT NO HOME MADE CAKE!!!!" and some other choice phrases that I'll keep tucked away in my mind, to be used in the event of a street fight or other self defense emergency. I'm not saying the Bishop's wife wasn't participating in the exchange either. There were accusations a-flyin'. And it wasn't pretty.

Poor Dalita wanted a store bought cake. She wanted sprinkles, you see. And her name written out in beautiful cursive. No, a Betty Crocker mix and a tub of frosting just wouldn't do. Dalita was so terribly offended by this massive offense that she even stopped coming to church for awhile.

Isn't that a great story? It just brings back such fun memories....

So this past week, we had a service exchange at our new church. I sat with a table of women at the beginning of the night and over dinner, shared with them the lovely story of Dalita Jones and the Bishop's wife. It's just such a classic!

After I shared the story, I declared that in honor of "Dalita Jones and the Great Cake Fight", I was going to offer a cake for my service exchange. I do make a mean cake, after all.

The service exchange that night involved each person blindly picking a card from the bowl and announcing what service they had picked from all the submissions. It was really a lovely night. People were offering free babysitting services, homemade cinnamon rolls, spring cleaning help, hand made scarves, knitted dishtowels, and all kinds of thoughtful and delightful fun.

As luck would have it, my service card was the last in the bowl to be drawn. And as luck would have it, the response from the recipient was this (publicly, mind you):

"A cake from Andrea Card? What would I want a cake for?" Then she proceeded to roll her eyes and I think she even made a gagging sound while she stuck out her tongue, plus other comments that continued after she sat down.

A stunned group of women stared at me, aghast at what they had just witnessed. I had been publicly shunned!! I think she might have wanted to fight me in the foyer! My cake got the equivalent of being thrown in the trash by Dalita Jones! UNBELIEVABLE!!!

But I just had to laugh. Serves me right trying to give a cake away at a service exchange!

The moral of this story: NOBODY DON'T WANT NO HOME MADE CAKE!!!

There just could not be a better ending to this story. Way to stand up for your sprinkles Dalita Jones!