The Final Truth Behind the Cake

A few of you have heard the complete description of what I affectionately call my ‘fruitcake principal’, and I suddenly feel like sharing it with anyone who wants to read about it, and this time without my general self-deprecating attitude (no more ‘to anyone who will listen, though I know no one will’). Maybe this will help some of you understand why I’m so weird. But probably not.

In the past, I have been told that it is a stupid and meaningless idea, and that the idea would only offend the recipient. Tonight I have finally found it in myself to forgive her for any past hurts she has ever caused me, including that one (which, incidently, was right near the end). I’ve turned the blade white, as it were(Any of you geeks get the line? Anyone? You’re the coolest, in my books....)

And now the promised goods....

The Fruitcake Principle originated somewhere in grade 12 or OAC (more probably it was the latter). I had a very good friend at the time who I had only known for a very little while, but who I felt close to none the less, and she was feeling very very depressed at the time. I never knew then just what was getting her down, but being her friend I decided I would set about trying to cheer her up. Now, right around that time I was going through some of the most important parts of my own little crisis of faiths, and I had been thinking in round about ways about the importance of people and their place in the universe. Seeing my friend there, thinking she was the lowest of the low and not worth caring for, I decided to put two and two together and make six.

Those who get close to me know that I have a bit of a quirky wit and a very odd sense of humor. This is what came out of it:

I would like you to think, for a moment, on the cosmic importance of fruitcake. Pretty small is what I’m guessing most of you are thinking right now. Why? Well, because it’s fruitcake and, by the simple North American stereotypes, pretty boring stuff (if not downright dangerous, depending on its age!)

So, given the unfortunate confection’s reputation, do you think you are more important than fruitcake? I don’t think there is anyone, no mater the state of their depression, who can honestly say that they are, in fact, of less cosmic importance than a small, most probably stale, baked good.

The next question is, quite simply, why? What makes you so sure? Who are you that you can, without a shadow of a doubt, place yourself above anything even if it is just fruitcake? Can you really present some sort of infallible proof that sets your importance over this freezer-burned treat, beyond blind faith and/or your own physical senses?

The truth is that there is no such thing as 100% - all you can really have is an idea you can hope to share with others. Since you, or anyone else, can’t truly prove your own cosmic importance above the stuff, then fruitcake, in all it’s rocky goodness, must be more cosmically important than you (or anything else, for that matter!)

At this point, I’m getting a “thanks a lot Tristan! As if I wasn’t depressed enough as it is, now I have you telling me I’m not worth fruitcake!”

Wait, wait! Don’t go anywhere! I’m not quite finished yet, there’s more (she stayed and, being my friend and knowing my sense of humor, gave me a little patience....)

Some of you may have caught an important little fallacy in my insistence that none of you are fit to lick fruitcake’s boots (although I personally like the stuff AND it’s tasty boots). The inconsistency is this: If there is no true 100% proof that you are more important than fruitcake, than how can I really say that fruitcake is the most important thing in that cosmic order of all things? I can’t (and neither can fruitcake, for that matter!)

What is the point of all this? First off, since we can’t prove that we are, in the grand scheme of things, more important than a simple dessert (albeit a socially unacceptable one), and at the same time we can’t prove this sweet-thing’s importance over us, then we must all be, by inference, equal, and therefore fruitcake. Second, since you can’t really prove anything beyond the confines of your own mind, you are then simultaneously the most important and least important thing ever in the universe, cosmos, creation, and beyond. Good for you :)


In the end, we laughed and she told me that I had cheered her up. Which is, of coarse, the whole point.