‘Reciprocal escalation and one-upmanship governs’ mimetic rivalry, the ‘rivalry resulting from imitation of a model,’ writes Rene Girard in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.

I certainly hope so.

My Sister One-Upped Me

My sister is a good cook. No, that fails to capture her kitchen genius. She made her famous Monkey Bread one Sunday morning. Oh my gosh! If you miss out on Sunday Monkey Bread you may as well skip mass because you have nothing to be thankful for.

Early week she baked a blackberry pie. She plucked a gallon of those little black sugar marbles off the thorny bushes growing wild near her beach vaca house, showed them off (Though being nose in dank memes I failed to notice. She pointed it out later though.), sent me to procure a pie crust, squeezed the lime, stirred in the sugar, and … yum!

Her pie beat my cookies. No mean feat, that. I more or less follow this 6 ounce each walnut chocolate chip Levain copy cat recipe. 6 ounces! No kidding. I can only eat 2 at one sitting. Once I ate 3 and got crushed by a sugar hangover the whole next day. If you live within an easy drive, hit me up, and I will bring you some.

Look at these monsters! 4 of them fill a full size cookie sheet.

Her pie was better. She one-upped my cookies.

It’s on.

Dangle Berries

My first stop the day after vaca was Thompson’s Blackberry Farm just up the road from the Hole In The Wall bar. Don’t kid yourself: either you drink beer there or wish you did.

Domesticated blackberries’ superiority over the wild kind boils down to two facts: First, they are sized more like shooters than peewees.  Secondly, no thorns. You can literally lean into the bushes to pluck berries dangling way up your noggin.

I say literally because I belong to blessed Gen X. Poor blighted Gen Z-ers would say, ‘you can unironically lean into the bushes …’

One-Upmanship

Of course I called sis from the farm and invited her down to pick berries, and praised the gigantic, thornless virtues of domesticated blackberries. One-upped.

Then I made a crust from scratch, with butter and lard. Mmmm. Two-upped.

And topped the pie with sugar crystals. Three-upped.

Then I ate it! Of course mine is better. Who would not think so? Four-upped.

Four-upped! A clear victory! Plus 1 in the W column!

Was I Mimetic?

So did I bake a blackberry pie because blackberries are in season and I like pie? Honestly I do not know. People get drawn into mimetic rivalries completely unconsciously, Girard says. We think ours desires originate in us, but in reality they originate when we observe neighbors. The fact that at the time I only thought I came up with the idea myself proves nothing.

I hope my sister sees this and one-ups me with her pecan pie.