I laugh hysterically, sometimes. I just can't stop.
I entered a cafe, some years ago, in the gulf islands, where I live, and asked the waitress if she had any cake.
"We have some space cake", she said.
I looked at her, wondering what space cake was. Maybe the kind of cake astronauts take into space with them. Dehydrated, perhaps, or in a tube. Maybe it had those tiny coloured candy bits all over it...
"What's a space cake?"
She looked at me, wondering what I was.
"It's got spaces in it", she said.
I started to giggle a bit. I tried to imagine a cake with spaces in it. What? Like a swiss cheese?
No matter how hard I tried, I was unable to picture it. I had to try some, if only to find out.
"I'll have a slice of that, then, and some coffee, please".
She waddled off, while I amused myself with imagining what it might turn out to be.
She returned with an extraordinarily ordinary-looking slice of cake. No coloured bits. No holes.
I took a bite.
Then the laughing started, in earnest.
She seemed quite upset as I shook and guffawed, almost falling off my chair.
I tried to explain it to her, but was laughing too much to do so.
She was from Newfoundland, it turned out.
Her accent had sounded like she was saying 'space cake', when in fact, she had been saying:
Spice cake.