For the last year the most heinous of all wedding anniversary traditions has rested dormant in the back of our freezer next to frozen stir fry and chili. This sugary concoction of confectionary has been locked in solitary confinement in the cramped confines of a white cardboard box that takes up more than a quarter of our freezer space. This sugary, diabetic-shock-inducing dessert has been the sole reason why our freezer never seems to have enough space for extra bags of pizza rolls.
Contained within this special box was the top tier of our wedding cake. The two-leveled cake was strawberry with white floral icing and edible beads just edible enough not to be considered a choking hazard to small children (and grown adults).
And we both planned on eating some of it.
After one year of marriage there is only one downside as far as I am concerned — now I have to remember another day of the year. Memory is not my strong suit. Being forgetful, specifically as it relates to important dates that need remembering, that’s my strong suit. I excel spectacularly in the field of; wait, what was I talking about again?
There are several wedding anniversary traditions that don’t make a lick of sense to me. Usually I am a huge fan of seemingly pointless traditions, especially a tradition for tradition’s sake. Traditions don’t actually mean anything, and most of them are illogical. Every year we actually believe a dirty rodent in Pennsylvania can predict the weather with more accuracy than the moronic morning meteorologist on television.
So I stuck with tradition and turned to the wedding anniversary gift chart. The first year of marriage is a paper present. Paper. What am I suppose to do? Buy Christine a legal notebook and a pack of paper plates and say, “Happy first anniversary!” I don’t think it works like that.
Or worse, just give her a hundred bucks. “But honey, it is made of paper. Can’t you see I’m trying to stick with tradition here?”
But by far the worst, most illogical marital tradition has got to be eating a piece of your wedding cake on your first anniversary.
Let’s look at this on a purely nutritional and, more importantly, biological level here: Attempting to digest year-old cake is not a smart activity to engage in. In the course of my daily endeavors, I try to avoid eating food that has celebrated at least one birthday.
Extracting the cake box from the freezer created an avalanche of frozen food. Light items, like a bag of frozen peas, fell harmlessly to the floor, while heavier items, like cylinder canisters of frozen juice concentrate, fell directly on my unprotected toes.
Once the frozen food ceased attacking me, we delicately transported the cake box to the counter and, with the grace of someone handling unstable uranium rods, opened the box cautiously. A dense and dramatic amount of ice vapor rolled out of the box’s top like dry ice.
We tried using a knife to cut the cake, which was practically frozen solid. When that didn’t work we chiseled away at the cake like it was a granite block. After several tries we had managed to carve out a piece of the cake.
So we tried eating one-year-old, completely frozen cake because that’s what tradition dictates, right? Why else perform foolish activities, such as purposefully ingesting old food and tempting fate with a wicked case of severe food poisoning?
Who knew that love tasted so much like freezer burn?
When the time came to discuss the cake’s future we were sad to make a decision. In the end we decided to save a small scrap of cake in the freezer for next year when we felt like taking a stroll down sentimental street — and the next time we wanted to experience a severe case of heartburn.