The dark side of dessert

Sometimes I find myself, through no direct fault of my own, in the midst
of a conflict between my indomitable near-OCD tendencies and a brick
wall in the form of inviolable physical laws (damn you, gravity!),
social norms (you mean I can't do that in public?), or international
mandate. This sends me into a mini-crisis where I must find a way to
either overcome my desire to do things a certain way, or to try to
subvert the established law of physics or society. Almost always I
choose the latter. Almost always I get crushed. I like to think I grow
a little as a person each time. It makes me feel better.

One such predicament occurred last night. By some fortunate
happenstance, we had at our disposal strawberries, blueberries, vanilla
ice cream, whipped cream and shortbread. In my short list of favorite
non-meat foods, all of these rank in the top ten. Shortbread, berries,
ice cream, whipped cream. It was a dessert for the ages. Such a
dessert deserved to be eaten with care. Every bite should contain a bit
of strawberry, blueberry, ice cream, whipped cream, and shortbread. By
themselves each ingredient is good. Any combination of the five is
excellent. But only all five would be truly magical.

Unfortunately there is a finite amount of yummy goodness that can
physically fit on a teaspoon. Then there are logistical hurdles.
Blueberries are not easily divisible, and when they do split they become
a mess. Strawberries can be apportioned in chunks, but the pressure
needed to cut a strawberry with a spoon easily crushes the soft
shortbread beneath it. And what about proportions? The strawberries
could be tasted in a small quantity, but the shortbread needed more than
a crumb before you could sense its contribution. The solution, of
course, to place the shortbread on the bottom of the spoon to maximize
tongue-to-dessert contact. Then you run into operational nightmares,
like how to cut a perfect cross-section of the dessert with the spoon to
preserve the shortbread-berries-ice cream-whipped cream layers. And
once that first cut is made, you can be darned sure that the structural
dessert integrity will be compromised. How do you deal with that??
With abject terror and bated breath, that's how.

But it was delicious. I am convinced, however, that two, possibly
three, bites had a smidgen more whipped cream than was allowable. This
knowledge haunts me.