Blindsided by basketball biscuits

I sighed as I held the faculty room door open for two crock pots (note to self:  careful, close reading is imperative here as one might initially think that I wrote two crack pots which obviously changes the meaning of my story...). It was going to be one of those days. I watched as my uber-athletic, manly-man friend Tyler placed his March Madness-themed bread rolls carefully on the table. "What the heck," I stormed, "What is going on?" You guessed it. Like the bad fairy in Sleeping Beauty, I was left off the Google-Drive-to-the-Cloud invitation list to the faculty luncheon. "You can still enjoy the food," Tyler reassured me as I yearned to pummel him with his snowball-sized spheres of Spring spirit. "No, I can't," I shouted attractively, stomping around the room, "not if I didn't contribute." Tyler glanced around the room, spotting the vending machine. "I bet you could do something with those," he suggested, pointing to a Snicker-sized solution.

A paper plate became my platter (with a hastily-drawn cartoon bunny making a somewhat inappropriate observation about faculty luncheons). I broke two plastic forks as I sawed my way through thick layers of caramel, nougat, peanuts and chocolate appetizers. Having carefully counted out EXACTLY 16 giant jelly beans for my students as a surprise for tomorrow ("Sixteen?" Sydney had asked incredulously, "The surprise will be for you, Mom, when they ask where the rest of their Easter treats are!"), I made a conscious sacrifice, adding a burst of color to my culinary creation.

Done and done. I could now freely load up multiple plates with homemade macaroni and cheese, meatballs, pasta salads, desserts, dessert and more desserts without another thought. I, of course, forgave friend and event coordinator, Kathy for her more-than-understandable mistake of overlooking me on the cloudy Google thing. I also made sure to act as a role model for my students when she stopped in the class to apologize. "Cherubs," I announced, "When someone causes you untold emotional damage, down to your very soul, it behooves you to respond graciously." We all then extended one long arm each, palms in the policeman STOP position toward Kathy and then looked dramatically in the opposite direction with our noses up (just a bit) in the universal gesture of friendship and forgiveness. I also forgave my dear friend MJ who made a point of stopping in to compliment my dish and demand the recipe. Talk about kicking a dog when she's down! My administrator, thinking that my "dish" was a joke, correctly predicted that I was the woman behind the paper plate platter. But as we all now know...that dish was no joke. Instead of being packed with peanuts, it was packed with pain. "What would you have brought if you'd known," a student asked curiously as I stabbed giant jelly beans with toothpicks. "What I always bring," I hissed through gritted teeth, "Salt and vinegar potato chips."