BranMayfield

In my family, a child's first birthday cake is a round chocolate cake. It has been chocolate since the advent of home photography, when my great grandmother decided that it must be chocolate for the sake of photographs, to show that the child enjoyed the cake. That part I can date to roughly the 1940s.

The weirder part is round. Because you see, the cake must be round to satisfy the spirits/gods of the thirteenth full moon of that child's first year of life.

The way it was explained to me, when humanity made months, we made twelve months, which meant that the thirteenth full moon was angry at being left out. Its spirits/gods wanted to curse humanity for this oversight. They demand acknowledgement and satisfaction or they'll curse each individual human.

So the cake must be round to acknowledge and satisfy the needs of the thirteenth full moon, a minor sacrifice to ensure that the baby will not be cursed for life. I asked once why it was only the first birthday cake and not the ones for the rest of your life, and my mother and grandmother both said that babies were more susceptible to curses and that's why so many babies used to die in the first year, so you're also thanking the thirteenth full moon for not killing your baby.

Both my mother and grandmother also claimed that if we ever went to a proper thirteen month system as the moon desired, we'd be free to have any shape of cake for a baby's first birthday.

It should be noted, per my wife, that I was first told this when we were eating cake at home for my cousin's first birthday. My cousin was not present, because his parents had chosen a cake in the shape of the number one. So my mother and grandmother very frantically came home and made a round cake that we all had to sit and eat so we could protect my cousin from the curse of the moon gods. My cousin was the only child in my family to have a different cake than round and my mother and grandmother were frantic over it lest something happen to him.

Little boy: I will not hit the teacher with a light saber.

Lady: And why are you not going to hit her with a light saber?

Boy: It is my toy, and my choice, but if I hit her with the light saber, I’m acting like a Sith.

Lady: Do you want to be a Sith?