Make ready the baked goods, and let fly!

It is the most foreboding sound in all the world;  the sort of sloppy swissssshhhhh that occurs as a tapioca pudding pie, flung at great speed, hurtles towards its mark on National Tapioca Pudding day.

And just in case you were curious:  yes, there really is a National Tapioca Pudding day (July 15th).

Why is it especially bad on National Tapioca Pudding Day?  Because if it isn't National Tapioca Pudding Day it means that the sound of the pie moving towards you at incredible speed may have fallen out of a window, or be part of a Christian outreach bake sale gone bad, or any one of a number of pie heaving possibilities. There is still a chance that the pie about to make contact with your head was in fact launched in error and without great malice, a horribly random occurrence in an otherwise beautifully ordered universe.

But if you hear the sound of a tapioca pie advancing upon thee at tremendous velocity on National Tapioca Pudding Day?  It meant that that pie was baked for you.  The pie crust was made just strong enough to ensure the pie stays fully together upon launch but then breaks into a number of pieces on contact with your face.  The pudding is not grandmother-grade Tapioca, the kind that really sticks to your ribs and makes you thankful that National Tapioca Pudding Day comes but once a year, but rather it has been made runnier than average so that it might relocate uncomfortably under the shirt after impact with the headular region.  If the person who pied you is a coward it will run down your back;  if the person is bolder or perhaps has a tapioca pudding fetish it will run down the front and perhaps somewhat delightfully over the nipples.

In short;  the feeling of dread that accompanies the sound of a well thrown tapioca pudding pie is only heightened if you are actually its intended target.  Though different by many, many degrees, I imagine it's not a dissimilar effect to hearing bullets whizzing by on a field of battle.  In the old old days, when men stood in dense, long lines with incredibly inaccurate muskets and shot at each other, you might at least find cold comfort in the fact the shots, though fired in anger, were merely fired in your general direction and not at you per se.  Fast forward three hundred years and a bullet snapping the air as it flies by may have the extra unwelcome characteristic of actually being fired at you personally. Somebody actually took aim at your noble visage and fired.  Both sounds are dreadful, but the later surely must be more unsettling.

Ironically enough, they say you never hear the tapioca pudding pie that finally gets you...