“Hey I’m making pancakes,” you say. “Want some?”
I don’t want pancakes. This isn’t all that unusual. They’re a food that you love, but for me they’re a sometimes food. Not something I ate a lot growing up. I’m not all that into sweet food to begin with.
And until quite recently, I could never get the hang of how much syrup and butter you’re supposed to add to pancakes so that they don’t end up like sponges you’re supposed to swallow.
So I don’t want pancakes. But I am hungry. And you ask me what I’d like to eat.
“Eggs,” I say. “But that’s too much work.”
You tell me that no, this isn’t too much work at all.
I tell you that scrambled eggs will be fine.
“But don’t you want over easy?” you say, knowing that’s the way I normally like my eggs.
“Well, that’d be nice,” I tell you. “But we don’t have any bread or anything, so scrambled eggs would make more sense, since there’s no yolk to sop up with scrambled.”
You point out that we have a loaf of parbaked bread that you could bake.
And that’s how you end up baking a loaf of bread. To go with over easy eggs that you’re apparently cooking for me. When all you were doing was asking me if I wanted you to make extra pancakes so I could have some, when you were going to make them already.
And that, my friends, is scope creep. And Acts of Service as a love language in action.
It’s wild to me that when you hand me the three (THREE!) over easy eggs with three perfect little slices of bread a bit later, that you’re apologetic. You dropped one of the eggs, you say. So it’s more fried hard. But I don’t care.
I feel spoiled beyond belief to be having eggs at all, coddled to kingdom come as I’m eating these ill-gotten gains. This offering that you went way out of your way to make. I’m floored that you pushed past my own objections that it would be too much work to make happen.
I don’t know what to make of any of it. I want to appreciate it, but I don’t want to be entitled to it.
I thank you. I eat the eggs. Compliment you on how good they are. Because they are, they are so good. And so are you.