The Icing on the Cake

To tell you the truth, I've been thinking about writing this blog entry for a few days now. Furthermore, each time I thought about it, I came up with a different title for this post. In the end, however, I decided that this story (the one I'm about to write) was the one that needed to be told.
For your enjoyment (and because I thought they were both rather good,) here are the two rejected titles:
1. The Awkwardness of an Intercepted Wink
2. How Not to Get a Job at a Ski Place

You can wonder about them now if you wish, or if you don't care, you can just move on. I can assure you that The Icing on the Cake will be worth it.
So here we go:

I like my plans to work out. That's one thing you should know about me.
The following plan most definitely did not work out.
But you know what?
Sometimes that's okay.

It's my friend Tim's birthday today. My friend Maddie and I thought it would be a good idea to make him a cake for his 19th, and since he really likes 3 Musketeers bars, we decided to make him a cake shaped like one. Cool, right?
We went shopping yesterday for ingredients:
2 boxes yellow cake mix
1 carton of eggs
3 cans of frosting (2 white, 1 chocolate)
3 tubes decorator's icing (1 red, 1 white, 1 blue)
1 tube yellow decorator's gel
1 3 Musketeers bar
The cake took us about two hours to make, with King guarding the door to the kitchen with a Nerf gun to keep Tim out.
After it was done (and it looked amazing-you can take my word for it), we stashed it away and waited for it to be midnight so we could have a little party.

Midnight finally came around, and we managed to get Tim into the TV lounge. We lit the candles on the cake, shushed the gathering crowd behind us, and walked in singing happy birthday.

What did Tim do?
He ran of course.
Took his socks off first (so they wouldn't get dirty)
And then sprinted out the door of our dorm, down the stairs, and along the sidewalk.
Four or so boys chased him down. Apparently he struggled, so they picked him up and carried him back on their shoulders.
Meanwhile, Maddie was standing there holding the lit cake in her arms. She quickly blew out the candles and we headed downstairs. We set the cake on the floor in front of Tim's door, and climbed to the top of the stairwell to hide out.

Now, it's not that we were mad at Tim. It's just that when you put that amount of time and effort into something, you hope for a better reaction. I suppose we should have known the big surprise format would make Tim uncomfortable, but honestly we didn't plan for it to happen like that; people merely saw us making the cake and wanted to be involved. In short, they all wanted to celebrate with him, just as we did.

Well, Mad and I sat at the top of the stairs for a long time, listening to people look for us and sing happy birthday again (I assume there was no running the second time). Eventually Evan and King found us up there, and Tim shortly discovered us also. He wanted to know if we had forks and plates, because he had nothing to serve the cake on.

We didn't have any.

Anyway, a lot of drama ensued after that, but the main thing is that after awhile Tim texted us asking us to please come down and have some cake. So we did.

And can I tell you something?
It tasted awful.
I'd imagine that the darn candy bar-shaped cake tasted something like bitterness, and like not letting go of the little things that don't matter much in the long run.
The frosting was good, though.
The frosting tasted like King patrolling with the Nerf gun for hours, and like laughing over me icing Tim's birthday as 3/7/09 instead of 3/7/10.
But it mostly tasted like having good friends who love you even when you run, and even when you hide in a stairwell.
The icing on the cake was the best part.