The eight-year-old is playing Portal and absolutely refuses to believe me that the cake is a lie.
They’re gonna show me — they’re gonna find the cake in Portal.
Me to the eight-year-old who is staring with uncharacteristic patience at Portal: “What are you doing?”
Eight: “GLaDOS said I should wait to be escorted to the party. So I’m waiting.”
Me: “There’s really not going to be any cake.”
Eight, with the brutality of the young: “You played it so long ago.”
Apparently, they either think I’ve forgotten the cake or that the game has changed since I played it.
“There is a cake room. Maaaaybe they don’t escort you to the cake room. But I’ll FIND a way to the cake room.”
*mutters to themself for a while about how to get to this imaginary cake room*
“…VENTS! But how do I get into the vents…?”
We’ve dragged the eight-year-old outside to a playground… where they’ve found a random, confused five-year-old to explain Portal to, along with all their plans for finding the cake.
Eight: “Aperture Science is trying to kill me, so I’m going to destroy all their equipment. They don’t deserve all this fancy equipment.”
Eight, a beat later: “They’re trying to kill me, but there’s still cake.”
Believing in the cake has clearly become a moral stand here.
We bought the kid a cake.
So, I guess they were right after all:
The cake is not a lie.
At least, not in our house.