If You Give a Prude a Cookbook,

 

If you give a Prude a cookbook, chances are she will want to bake a cake.

As she measures her dry ingredients into a bowl, she’ll realize her salt and baking powder are running low.

She’ll put them on her grocery list.

When she looks in the bowl she’ll see she should have sifted the chunks of cocoa.

So she’ll get out her sifter and grasp and squeeze and shake it till the lumps are gone. 

But then her hand will hurt.

So she’ll need to find the Icy Hot.

With the batter mixed she is ready to pop the pans in the oven. But men have converged outside her kitchen. 

She’ll instruct them not to slam any doors or stomp any feet or the

Cakes May Fall.

Back in the kitchen she puts the cakes in the oven, sets the timer and begins her next task.

But Son #2 and Husband interrupt. They need mediation in a crucial business matter involving grout color and a liability clause.

The Prude dons her Peacekeeping hat and works through the tangled intricacies of self-employment.

Peace reigns. Until she realizes the dispute drowned out the sound of the buzzer.

She stomps and slams her way to the oven and yanks out the cake breathing threats of violence and recrimination.

After she and the cake have cooled she sets the mixer to the icing ingredients. She wants to get the frosted cake in the fridge before the kitchen gets any hotter.

That will remind her that when the A/C isn’t running the powder room toilet is prone to perspire. She directs a fan at its sweaty tank.

Her mixer demands attention for the icing and she washes her hands, ices the cake, deposits it in the fridge and collapses on the sofa.

She picks up a book.

 It is a cookbook.

And if you give a Prude a cookbook, chances are….