Strange Events

?
So i go to the grocery store. I pick my items, pay and head towards the exit. Ten meters before the door a lady stops me: "excuse me can you help me?"
I'm assuming she wants money. She is African. On skin, she looks complacent, but underneathe she looks in desprete need of something...
"what do you need?" I ask. I am in a rush, my dog is in the car, i have many things to do, i want to go home.
She looks up at me, almost embarrassed, "can you write on a cake?"
I am so dumbfounded that i admit, without realizing what i am committing to that "yes, i have experience in pastry."
When i left Atlanta, i was working as EXPO of a fine dinning restaurant...the only problem was, we didn't have customers (Southerns are more thrifty than Yankees when the economy went tough, the rich stopped spending long before the poor did).
In my down time at Aquaknox, we, Summer and I, practiced our calligraphy. Only instead of ink we used melted semi-chocolate, and instead of paper, we used $65 glass and china plates.


The women and I, walk back to the cake. She pays for it, and is asked by the cashier "so you found someone?" Now i think this is a prank. I look at the exit for cops, i look up for cameras. I check my basket "am i accidentally stealing something?" i think. Before i realize i am following the two women to a back area, behind the counter of the bakery, with a cake, my shopping basket, my cell phone, which is blowing up.
The lady who first approach me does not speak English well, i have trouble understand. I do get that she wants "Happy Birthday" written on the cake....i have trouble writing with a pen and paper, but icing and..and whatever, i can do! Only she ask me to write in cheap green granulated sugar frosting, not $6 dollar per ounce, imported, perfectly melted semi chocolate...and then she ask for her sister's names to be placed on the cake. "Uhh ok, lets see what happens," is my response.

It was something out of a movie, and when i was done, with what i consider to be the worst pastry art i've ever attempted. The smile on her face is almost worth the 20 extra minutes i spent in the store.
I can't help but laugh the entire time. And as i exit stage right, the cashiers and the dyke security guard that ALWAYS finds a way to slow down my shopping experince praise and admire the cake. A cake which i consider a disaster.


the short. I enjoy helping strangers. You get something out of it. Something that money will not give you. I hope her sister enjoys the cake. I hope the women tells her sister what she went thru to get "Happy Birthday Florence" on the damn cake. And most of all, i hope she appreciates it.

weird, but yea, that was the end of my friday, and my beer went south (warm) by the time i got back to my car.

no proof reading. I'm buzzed and sleep deprived.