I don’t know about y’all, but I hate pancakes.
Actually I do know. You love pancakes. Everyone loves pancakes. Who doesn’t love pancakes? Oh, right, I don’t.
I find several fundamental concepts of pancakes to be particularly disturbing. For one, the unnatural witchcraft of their cakey sponginess that allows them to expand exponentially on the plate and in your stomach with every bite (will I ever be done with this damn meal?!?) forces me to question what kind of horrific lab experiment of a breakfast I have ordered.
Furthermore, for those of us (and by us I mean you, because the domestic trait skipped a generation in my line of ancestry) who find cooking and baking to be an enjoyable experience and not a terrible chore/disaster — why on Earth is it so difficult to make a decent pancake on the first try?
In my albeit limited experience in the kitchen, I have found no greater struggle than creating a decent first pancake. But maybe that’s just impossible. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe the first pancake is crap for a reason.
Aside from being deficient in a pancake-amourous gene, I assure you that I am a perfectly normal eighteen-year-old girl (with a special type of hate reserved for chocolate, and an unhealthy obsession with Kristen Wiig, so maybe not so much…) who loves to love, but who unavoidably makes mistakes along the way. And this normal girl has come to what she considers a rather brilliant, break-through moment in her life: the first relationship is like the first pancake. Mixed and dribbled into the pan alongside glittering hopes and dreams and rainbows and unicorns, but ultimately turning out sticky and undercooked and filled with holes — an overall disgusting mess that can’t even be fed to the dogs.
But there’s no shame in that.
That statement has been the one of the most important things I’ve learned. Mostly because my first relationship was an experience I was less than proud of, and that I had come to regard with quite a bit of humiliation. Let me paint the picture for you wonderfully innocent and fortunate souls:
Rising senior in high school. Thinks she’s on top of the world. Thinks she has good judgment and makes wise decisions — because she’s all grown up now, of course. Thinks it a marvelous idea to start flirting with a freshman. Even though she’s his peer mentor. Even though his head is more full of hot air than a balloon and even though he rivals Narcissus himself in arrogance. Thinks it an even better idea to fall for this fool and to broadcast it across campus. Gets dumped just shy of a month in to the relationship. Actually counted the days so she knew she was exactly three days short of that illustrious month mark. Mourned the relationship for twice as long as the relationship lasted.
A senior dumped by a freshman. They almost put it in the year book. I was nearly eternally memorialized as “Class Cougar,” or “Most Popular with the Underclassmen.” It doesn’t get worse than that. If it does, thumbs up to you for being able to read this because you haven’t disintegrated and blown away with the wind.
My point in this ocean of self-deprecation is that my first relationship was meant to manifest into this horrendous, ugly, and woefully embarrassing mess. Just like the first pancake, which is inherently an inedible sore sight. The more pancakes you make after the first one, the prettier and tastier they get. So do your relationships.
You learn how much heat you need on the pan, how much batter to use, how long to leave it cooking, how to expertly flip, and how to get it out of the pan. In the same way, the more relationship experience you gain, the better you get at choosing men and fostering and maintaining quality, fulfilling, healthy relationships. Eventually you’ll make that utterly perfect pancake — with rounded edges, fluffy consistency throughout, and that slides right out of the pan to melt blissfully in your mouth. And then the nightmare of so long ago will all have been worth it, just for this delicious piece of heaven.
So there’s no need to hang up your apron when you set off the fire alarm and permanently crust overly-salted dough to your best non-stick pan that just didn’t do its fucking job. Because there’s no way you can have a pancake worse than the first.
Of course, my next pancake was my first boyfriend’s older brother. Then his cousin.
So maybe pancakes really aren’t my thing. I should try crepes.
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