Three students injured in West Point cake cutting ritual, reports claim
Last Friday, the nightly dessert distribution at United States Military Academy West Point turned deadly. Jeff, the plebe assigned to cut the fruitcake, doffed his hat and removed the laminated cake-slicing template from beneath it. He brushed fresh buzzcut hairs off the template and placed it on the cake. There were seven people sitting at this table, which would mean Jeff had to divide the cake into seven pieces. However, seven was a very inconvenient number of cake slices to cut, so even though fruitcake was his favorite, Jeff decided to forgo a slice so that he would only have to cut the cake into six pieces.
An older cadet, Sally, recognized this maneuver, having performed it many times herself during plebe year. She, too, declined dessert, frustrated that Jeff was trying to get out of the hazing she once had to go through. Now, Jeff was forced to cut the cake into five pieces. Unfortunately, Jeff’s hands were shaking as he put the knife into a glass of water to clean it, causing it to clink against the sides. Jeff tried to remove the knife from the glass, but his trembling sent the glass tumbling to the floor, where it shattered. Even though Jeff was now standing in a pile of broken glass, he knew he could not leave without first finishing the slicing of the cake.
Jeff managed to finish dividing the cake into fifths. Sally leaned over the fruitcake, inspecting it closely. She found that the third cut Jeff had made was 0.3˚ off. Struck with horror at his failure, Jeff jumped. Unfortunately, Jeff was still holding the knife, and Sally was still leaning over the cake. Sally managed to jerk back in time to save her eyeball from getting punctured, but at the cost of her eyebrow. Sally faceplanted into the fruitcake, getting blood and a disembodied eyebrow on the dessert. In the commotion, Jeff fell backwards and landed in the pile of glass, lodging several shards in his posterior.
Everyone else at the table rushed to attend to Sally. Another cadet, Ignatius, tried to get the cake out of the wound where her eyebrow had once been and accidentally knocked several crumbs onto Ermintrude. In retaliation, Ermintrude grabbed a huge handful of the fruitcake and shoved it into Ignatius’s face, causing him to accidentally swallow Sally’s eyebrow. A dried prune in the fruitcake also knocked out several of Ignatius’s teeth, which he then choked on.
Eventually, several nearby officers noticed that the situation had escalated beyond the customary hazing and performed the Heimlich maneuver on Ignatius. Jeff, Ignatius, and Ermintrude were all summarily expelled from West Point. Sally was honored by the academy president for her efforts to uphold the sanctity of an important West Point tradition. Questions remain as to whether Sally will forever remain one-eye-browed.