1.   First pancakes are irksome because they are recurring flops.

2.   First pancakes are blotchy disks, part brown and part pasty white, which I slip surreptitiously into the stacks of subsequent, uniformly golden pancakes.

3.   I noticed that the first pancakes took the sheen off the griddle, so there was little oil left for later batches.

4.   The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.

5.   The secret to a beautiful first pancake?