Adventures of a Cake Walk

On Sunday, my mother came up and we met my grandparents at a church festival for lunch. Along with lunch, I participated in a very "American" activity: a cake walk. This is where you stand around a three sided square with various numbers sectioned off, and you place a ticket on a number, and a wheel is spun and if your number is selected, you win the cake for that round. There's a variety of different ways a cake walk is done, but that's the way it was done yesterday. Now these tickets for the cake walk do cost money and you get to chose which cake you want to play for, but when you have tickets to get rid of and there's cake on the line, you tend to lose all self control. Now only in America will people throw down cash and gamble for cake. With a country full of compulsive gamblers and even more compulsive eaters, a cake walk is genius, because people are blinded by cake and just give up their wallets. This combination of gambling and cake is quite a dangerous one, especially when you just can't get enough. This simple cake walk to help out the church ended up being a highly competitive sport highlighted with yelling, pushing, and sprinkles. It was ridiculous. I want to say I stood there and observed on how funny this was to watch people lose their christianity at the cake walk, but I had to play along. What started out as an amusing way to pass time turned out to be a mild obsession. I played for about an hour and didn't win a single cake, therefore with growing frustration and hunger after watching german chocolate and red velvet slip out from underneath me, I had to win a cake. So I continued to burn a hole in my wallet just for cake...pathetic I know. After analyzing how the game is played, I came to the conclusion that numbers 35, 19, and 21 were often chosen, so I decided to place copious amounts of tickets on those numbers. Result: success! After 3 hours at the cake walk and I'm sure about 30$ spent on tickets, I left that evil cake walk with nine cakes. Nine! Part of me is proud of my nine cakes, the other part is ashamed of how I let my self go all because of cake gambling. I was sucked into this sly way of church volunteers to take my money. Although this cake walk is a great example of how far we will go for food, what we will sacrifice, and how silly we will act, at least I got cake!