When I talk to people about working at the ballpark and what it was like working in a stand like the deck, the one thing that is hard to explain is the friendship that we all shared. We were more like a family. Not only because some of us were actually related, but because we spent so much time together and we all got along really well.

One thing we did as a result of being so close is we would celebrate different things throughout the summer. Birthdays, graduations, you name it, we found a way to celebrate it.

And of course, there was always cake.

Don’t worry, in true deck stand fashion these celebrations never went smoothly.

Typically, when you have a cake to celebrate something such as a birthday you also have candles. We always had candles, however, with candles you also need a tool to light the candles. Without fail, we never had a decent way to light the candles. You would think after the first two or three times we realized we had candles and no way to light them, someone would bring in a lighter and just leave it in the stand. Not the case. I don’t think we remembered a lighter any of the times we had candles. Instead, we ended up borrowing a lighter from someone who smoked and lighting the candles that way.

This was still not the most memorable part of celebrating in the deck stand. There is one moment that still stands out as the greatest celebration in the deck stand.

It was a birthday celebration and the cake that was brought in was a log shaped ice cream cake. My sister and I had picked up some cool football candles and, after finding a way to light the candles of course, it was time to cut the cake.

I’m not sure why, but after we took out the candles we decided to move the cake to a different spot on the counter to cut slices. That’s when things went downhill.

We picked up the cake to move it and next thing we knew it was lying on the ground.

Top down.

After staring at the cake on the ground for about a minute someone finally thought to pick it up. This is the part that I can’t believe actually happened. We decided that if we simply scraped off the top layer of the cake it would be perfectly fine to eat. I’m not necessarily proud of the decision we made, but it was really good cake.

In the end, most of our celebrations went off without a hitch. We became closer than most coworkers would be and celebrated many big moments over the three or four summers we all worked together.

Confessional: Have you ever celebrated the birthday of a coworker? Was there a cake?