Pop Secret

Before we start, let me begin by saying that for all four years of high school, I planned on becoming a chef once I grew up. It was a lofty goal, so those plans were eventually abandoned, for reasons which will become painfully obvious, momentarily.

It's Saturday night. I'm waiting for a friend of mine to pick me up so's we can go to Plano, for various reasons that we don't need to get into right now. While I'm waiting, I'm watching the Florida / Tennesse football game on TV and refreshing ESPN.com to read just how quickly SMU is getting hammered into the ground by OSU.

At that point I decide that the only thing that properly goes along with the destruction of my alma mater by Oklahomans is some popcorn. So at a commercial, I run into the kitchen, extract some microwave popcorn from way up on the top shelf, toss it into the microwave, slam the door, hit the POPCORN button and run back into the living room just as play begins again. I am the essence of conserved movement.

I hear my phone ring, so I run into the bedroom and have a 2 minute phone conversation. When I come out, I hear the microwave make the noise that indicates it is quite done, thank you, please remove this darn food from me. I run over to the kitchen and pull the popcorn bag from angry microwave.

Here, I notice there seems to be a lot of steam coming from the popcorn bag. Like a lot, a lot. But whatever, right? Popcorn = yum. I dig around, find a big bowl to put said popcorn in, when I realize that, hmm, you know what? that ain't steam. It's smoke. The popcorn inside the bag is on fire. And every time I shake the bag to cool it off, a little more oxygen gets in there to fuel the flames.

What anyone else would think: Oh no! Fire! Put it out!

What my brain thinks: Nooo! The popcorn is ruined! Maybe I can save part of it!

Luckily, my common sense kicked in at some point, so instead of trying to rescue the few remaining delicious kernels, I did what all rational people would do in this situation. Namely, I threw the bag into the sink and started smacking it with a spatula until it stopped smoking.

Huzzah, go me!

At this point, thinking all is fine, I turn on the little fan above the stove to suck the smoke away, spray a bunch of air freshener to mask the stench, and go back in my bedroom to check the score of the SMU game. Maybe 3 minutes later, I decide that one near-apartment-burning shouldn't really stop me from enjoying some high cholesterol goodness, so I go back into the kitchen to attempt the process one more time, this time vowing to watch the microwave the entire time for signs of improper popcorn management.

When I get to the kitchen, though, before I turn on the light, I realize that there is something glowing in there. Y'see, life lesson #1 that I should have taken from this experience: when something is on fire, it isn't enough to beat it into submission with a kitchen utensil, you should also douse it in water for several hours, lest it reignite and come after you again, only this time it's personal.

So, I whip out the spatula again and turn the water on in the sink this time and together we triumph over The Flaming Bag of Popcorn and Death. Once it is a large, soggy mess, I gather it all up, put it in a plastic bag and throw it out in the dumpster, figuring if it spontaneously combusts again, at least there all it will burn is trash and it will never get its revenge.

I then returned home and popped a second bag without incident, which I then devoured. Because nothing makes you work up an appetite like repeatedly hitting a flaming bag of popcorn with a spatula for 15 minutes.

And to think I totally could have been a chef.