When we were kids, my friends and I always tried to get the upper hand over one another. It was a stupid game, I know, but one way we achieved dominance was to have our snack left after the other kids had gobbled theirs down.
One day my parents bought my cousin and me a Hershey bar each and put us in the backseat for the drive to our grandparents’ house in Alabama.
“Mmm,” I murmured, unwrapping the candy and opening up for a big bite but turning my head away so Banks couldn’t see that I wasn’t really biting the Hershey bar at all.
“Yeah, good!” he agreed, chomping off half of his bar. The delicious aroma of chocolate and almonds filled the car. My goal was to have all of my candy left to taunt him with after he had gobbled his down. It would be a wonderful job of one-upmanship!
I really wanted a bite of my chocolate, but I had to one-up my cousin. I turned away again pretending to take another bite. But my mouth was too close to the candy. The tension between tasting and saving was too great! I chomped down on the first block of chocolate, and when I came up for air Banks was grinning at me.
“Aw, too bad, your candy is all gone, and I’ve got half of mine left! Har-har!”
“No fair!” I shot back, though his trick was more “unfair” than mine I couldn’t have said.
Mother, who always seemed to know when I was being devious, turned around and said quietly, “Donna, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
We weren’t eating cake, we were eating candy, but I got the idea. If I had the enjoyment of eating my Hershey bar immediately, I couldn’t also have the thrill of besting my cousin.
Some goals are mutually exclusive. We can have one or the other but not both. Why do people today seem to believe that they should have their cake and eat it too?
Years ago I taught a Freshman Composition class for Co-Lin during the summer. It met two nights a week for three hours a night for three college credits. That meant that each night in class equaled a week of classes during a regular year.
On the first night of one term, a young man came to my desk to explain to me that he was signing up for the course, but that he would be missing one week of class to go on a mission trip and another week for a family vacation. Students got only one “cut,” which meant they could only miss one night before losing credit for the class.
“Well, it looks to me as if you’re too busy to take this class,” I said.
“Do you mean you want me to miss doing Christian service and being with my family?” he asked angrily.
“Not at all,” I replied. “I just want you to decide whether you want college credits or vacation time, because you can’t have both.”
He stomped out of class, presumably having made a decision he didn’t think he’d have to make, since he had explained so nicely to me how it was all going to work.
Recently I heard that a Secret Service agent assigned to protect Donald Trump at a rally had abandoned her post to breastfeed her baby. Relatives had met her with the baby at a nearby hotel.
This agent had taken on two admirable jobs: to protect a person and to take care of her baby. Unfortunately, the two responsiblities are mutually exclusive — she could do one or the other, though I’m sure liberals would tell us that she had every right to a job as a Secret Service agent and to take care of a baby at the same time. But it doesn’t work.
A spokesman for the agency said the incident was being investigated. He then proclaimed, “All employees of the US Secret Service are held to the highest standards.”
This is their highest standard— that agents can take care of family business instead of completing their assignment? That agent must be thrilled to have her cake and eat it too and still be paid by the all-forgiving American tax payer!
Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s speeches are full of cake-eating and cake-having. She’s going to give every first-time homebuyer $25,000, pay off college loans and leave every give-away flowing to us but not raise taxes.
She want to implement price controls, a socialist technique for keeping prices down, but you’ll still have a job and get a raise!
You’ll enjoy prices not rising, but you’ll wonder why your employer can’t give you that raise. He can’t pay you more when he can’t charge what the products you make are worth. Then he can’t afford to sell the product at all because it costs more to make than he’s earning for it. And despite the political promises, he’s being charged more in taxes than he takes in. When that happens he’ll close his business and be just as poor as you. You and your rich boss will be nice and equal, a socialist goal.
That equality sounds great, but you’ll notice that neither of you has a cake now. You may have a “right” to one, but when you’ve eaten your cake, it’s gone. Fairness doesn’t prevail in cake eating.
