A nihilist is born

Graffiti on a desk in a seventh grade math classroom:

"The cake is a lie."


I'm fascinated by how much of the graffiti I see is not pornographic or obscene, or even offensive in any way. This one makes me wonder, "what cake?" I like the ones that make me wonder. I see a class in my mind, disappointed by a lack of cake, and as the students protest loudly, one quiet girl in red scrapes into her desk, "The cake is a lie." From that day on, she wears only black. Every day now, she sees through the veil of lies to the truth of it all: all cakes are lies. All truths are lies. It's all just one, big, stinking lie. So nothing matters, just like the cake that never was. You might as well bake a cake every day, or bake no cakes at all. What's the big deal with cakes, anyway? She'll go on feeling like this until she turns thirteen and discovers Hermann Hesse.

10 comments:

  1. "The cake is a lie."

    Perhaps that's why someone left it out in the rain.

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  2. Shoshanah, I question the quality of the school you're teaching at. That is the most hideously disfigured desk I've ever seen.

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  3. So obvious. It was a birthday cake for the teacher. The lie was the number of candles.

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  4. The desk is sort of messed up by the picture I took of it. I was trying to get the graffiti, which is actually under the desk. The desk top isn't in the picture. This is the part of the desk that would face your stomach if you were sitting in it.

    The cake is a lie!!!

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  5. The cake was a lie
    It was American pie

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  6. I heart you.

    As a pastry student, I too am intrigued by that statement. Also, am hoping to be able to say it in a class one day.

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  7. Does it make it any more poetic that the young nihilist wrote it on the bottom of the desk, where only the nonconformists would chance discovering it?
    I can't help thinking that they class had a cake one day that said something like, "We'll miss you, Mrs. Cooper," and the kid really, really disliked Mrs. Cooper.

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  8. Don't know why, but it reminds me of a picnic table I saw at a city park that had "This table is refuckingserved" carved into it.

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  9. Is it sad that I know that this is video game engrish that became a pop culture meme? I am redeemed only in that I can't remember what game it is.

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  10. The game that this comes from is called Portal.

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