“Hey, man. I’m glad you’re here. Take this.”

I’d just sat down at my desk and here was this guy trying to hand me a piece of cake. Not cake on a plate. But a piece of cake in his hand, icing side toward his palm he was holding the fucking thing like one of those pinchers you see in the grab-a-prize arcade machines.

Put in a dollar. Get fucked trying to grab a small plushy purple whale.

Except in this case it was: fail to resist natural impulse to take things handed to you and reach for piece of sweaty coffee cake. Now, hold cake in puzzlement.

“Sorry, dude. I can’t eat that.”

“Aw, come on.”

“I’m allergic.”

Yeah. Come on, indeed. Would you like some hand cake? It’s delicious cake, nom nom nom and it’s only a little soiled from the two dozen unsavory things I’ve probably been doing with my hand since I picked said cake up and tried to hand it to somebody. It looked as if he’d reached into his pocket and exclaimed: “What a find, indeed. Cake.”

Sweaty hand-cake from a magical pocket. Mmm.

“Dude, I really can’t. But thanks for thinking of me.”

“Ahhh.”

And he walks away. I’m clearly an asshole for turning down hand-cake. Somewhere he probably located a plate and perhaps even a fork, if such luxuries can be found in the desolation of your average corporate office building. Otherwise it’s just a mass of primitives under the florescent lights, grunting and picking up cake and handing it to one another like wampum. Hand cake is, after all, the coin of the realm in some principalities.

But I digress.

Somewhere he probably found a plate and a fork. Took the cake out of his hand and set it on the plate with the touch of a hummingbird. The fork goes next to it and he walks to the next unsuspecting member of the office and hands them the plate.

“Oooh,” They exclaim, “Cake.”

And in they dig and he looks on in approval. Here, he thinks, is a person who wants my delicious cake. Watching with a proud smile while he cleans icing and pocket lint out from under his nails.

So, in closing, always check your cake for palm prints and pocket lint.

But you probably already thought of that.