There is something quite pressing that I must make clear immediately.
I am afraid I am going to have to take that cupcake. That cupcake with the red-colored frosting. The one with the soft, fluffy cake and the white-paper wrapper. Yes, the cupcake that is virtually indistinguishable from the 16 to 20 other cupcakes around me in the office at this time.
This is the sole cupcake I have singled out. Granted, it happened to be the first to enter my field of vision as I came in the room.
The cupcake situated in that location is the cupcake of my desire. The one at which I am at this moment intently staring. That is the cupcake that I will shortly be removing from its wrapper and consuming. The sooner you grasp the reality of this, the easier it will be for all of us.
While the cupcake in question is not, at this time, officially “mine,” I wish to make it known, in no uncertain, vague, or ambiguous terms, that under absolutely no circumstances will anyone other than myself be eating that cupcake.
And, yes, this remains true regardless of anyone else’s opinions, plans, or intentions vis-à-vis the cupcake and the eating of the cupcake. These are the facts as they stand. I fully intend to make that cupcake there exclusive to my own ingestion, and I can only hope to convey the extreme level of urgency with which this statement is intended.
I am told there are other cupcakes available elsewhere, and, yes, it was certainly a nice gesture on Jan’s part to have brought the cupcakes to the office for all to share. I am aware of the myriad arguments against my eating this cupcake. Yet I fail to see what any of these disputations have to do with me. No one understands better than me the complex yet inevitable future of that cupcake, with its multicolored sprinkles, as it pertains to my gullet.
Unfortunately, a compromise of any kind is not going to be a possibility at this point. For I am willing to undertake any task, move any mountain, do all within my power in heaven and earth, to lay my teeth into that specific tasty confection.
I am taking that cupcake.
And there’s no conceivable series of events whereby anyone other than me is eating it.
I’m not referring to the white-powdered one, or that one over there with green frosting, or any other cupcake here or anywhere ever in the history of time. Rather, I am resolute and steadfast in my unblinking fixation on a very specific cupcake now almost within arm’s reach, with a lopsided top and an appealing pile of crumbs surrounding it.
Undoubtedly, my plans do not include walking across the room to the box of cupcakes from whence this cupcake originally came. I want the red one. I do not care whether or not there are numerous red ones “exactly like it” in the aforementioned box. I am not interested in irrelevant information about other cupcakes. No, the truth is, that red cupcake that I previously indicated is the cupcake for me.
I do not want to hear about the cupcake place down the street that delivers. Nor do I wish to recall the cupcake from last week that was given me despite a coworker’s obvious eagerness to eat it herself. Those are entirely different, separate cupcakes that have no bearing on my relationship with the one in question, the one I have selected. Those are abstract cupcakes that, as of now, exist only in the mind—purely hypothetical cupcakes that have no constructive place in this scenario.
In no way are any personal dynamics, motivations, or animosities entering this equation. It is simply a matter over which no one has any control. The matter of the cupcake is not open to negotiation.
Now, on to the pressing matter of that tall, refreshing glass of milk.
