What if I were to throw a banana cream pie in your face? A classic homage to the slapstickers of Silent film, who were as focused on pie as they were on punchlines. Back when slapstick meant actual slapping with sticky substances. The good old days. You might think since I’m the one with the motive, the opportunity, and the dessert, I’m somehow to blame.
Well, you’d be wrong. Because no single action can be blamed on the single individual who committed it. Life doesn't conform to your limited worldview.
It’s true, I gallivanted into a celebrity’s dressing room, foxtrotting past security, spilling crust with each new step, aimed and fired. I brought an extra canister of whipped cream in case what was on the pie didn’t cover your unusually large face. What makes me responsible for such behavior? Society, and the systems that prop it up, allowed me to go on unfettered. I could’ve been stopped at any time along the way. But no one dared to intervene.
There’s the baker, with his coterie of apron-clad kneaders, silently rolling dough before the sunrise. I didn’t make the pie that ended up in your face. I bought it, yes. But someone else would’ve done the same thing had I not asked for “extra cream,” and “don’t worry about how it tastes.”
The movies I alluded to earlier are partially to blame as well. These silver screen apologias glorified the pie pugilists of yesteryear, incapable of finishing a thought without sending a sugary delight flying at their conversation partner. While I didn’t create a society based around throwing pastry, we're all living in it.
I was merely the last domino to fall. But as any gamer knows, a domino can't fall alone. It takes a village to find fault.
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