PRO: Finally doing something for my kids’ school.
CON: Don’t want to do anything for my kids’ school.
PRO: Was already going to Hell anyway.
CON: Don’t love the heat.
PRO: Will see a lot of familiar faces.
CON: Will remind me of the oven I’m currently avoiding.
PRO: Could always just go buy something at the market and rough it up a little.
CON: They said it had to be homemade. And they’re expert level at sniffing out homemade-baked-goods fraud.
PRO: I’m expert level at choosing easiest thing to bake.
CON: I’m non-expert level at following basic package instructions that a monkey with an apron could master.
PRO: Was always curious what monkeys were better at than me. Now I know.
CON: No monkeys available in neighborhood to outsource this to.
PRO: Thinking about monkeys.
CON: …
PRO: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself.
CON: They’re really crappy.
PRO: They’re still brownies.
CON: Self-loathing.
PRO: Hero to my kids when they smell fresh-baked brownies as they walk in the door after school.
CON: I already brought the brownies to school.
PRO: Except the ones I didn’t.
CON: And those brownies are long gone, too, suckas.
PRO: “But they benefit your school.”
CON: *whispers to self* “And my desire to eat brownies in secret.”
PRO: Important life lesson about how harsh the world can be.
CON: Especially the part of the world that’s our kitchen.
PRO: I’m not here to make friends.
CON: So far succeeding.
PRO: I came here to do two things—make shitty brownies and get the PTO off my back.
CON: I’m all out of brownies.
PRO: PTO is off my back.
CON: For about 3 minutes until they realize that partial batch of brownies is going to bring in maybe 75 cents max.
PRO: Could respond to all future PTO requests with “UNSUBSCRIBE.”
CON: They’ll know it’s me.
PRO: Willing to jump on that grenade.
CON: Talk of weapons frowned upon at school.
PRO: It’s a figure of speech.
CON: No shit, Sherlock.
PRO: Fighting with myself in list form still better than making something for the bake sale.
CON: You don’t get secret brownies from fighting with yourself in list form.
PRO: But you don’t have to bake anything either.
CON: Homeschool.
Illustration by Joseph Thomson
