Today is my coworker Lance’s birthday. Had I known, I’d have picked him up a cake on my way into the office. Though we don’t have a “birthday club” in Marketing, no one would say no to a birthday cake. And when I told Lance that he should have told me that today was his birthday, he said, “It’s on Facebook!”<\/p>\n
“Yes,” I said, “and I saw that when I got to work this morning, and I’d have seen it if I’d turned my computer on at home this morning, but I didn’t, so I didn’t know. So, I’d have bought you a cake.” I paused dramatically. “A red velvet cake.”<\/p>\n
“I hate red velvet cake,” said Lance.<\/p>\n
You could have smacked me across the face with a salmon, I was so flabbergasted. “What do you mean, you ‘hate red velvet cake’? Years ago, you asked for a red velvet cake.”<\/p>\n
“No, I didn’t.”<\/p>\n
“Yes, you did. We were at the old building. Andrew and I discussed this.”<\/p>\n
“Maybe Gertz wanted red velvet cake.”<\/p>\n
Realization dawned. “Or maybe you told me you wanted red velvet cake because you didn’t want a cake but you wanted everyone else to enjoy it.” And, indeed, that birthday, circa 2011 or so, I’d bought Lance a red velvet cake at the Food Lion in Owings Mills on my way into the office.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t,” Lance insisted.<\/p>\n
“I am having a Mandela moment!” I declared. “I have become unmoored in the multiverse!”<\/p>\n
Dramatic flourish, and exit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is my coworker Lance’s birthday. Had I known, I’d have picked him up a cake on my way into the office. Though we don’t have a “birthday club” in Marketing, no one would say no to a birthday cake. And when I told Lance that he should have told me that today was hisContinue reading “A Mandela Moment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4697,4698,4124],"class_list":["post-31537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-mandela-effect","tag-red-velvet-cake","tag-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}