I was reminded the other day of why I should avoid microwaves at all cost. I’m a microwave murderer. Not a premeditative murderer, mind you, I’m more of a microwave man slaughterer. You know, the one where it’s an accident.
Maybe it’s my curiosity toward the idea of pumping things full of nuclear waves.
Maybe it’s my inability to figure out the stupid buttons because it’s never as easy as pushing one button to cook your food.
Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m too scatter brained and ADD to pay attention to things I put in the microwave and forgot about until odd smells invade my nasal cavity.
For example, yesterday, one of the guys on my floor offered my roommate and I some of his leftover hot wings. Being poor college students that love to eat (and man do I love to eat) we eagerly accepted.
He handed me a cardboard takeout box. I didn’t bother to look inside the box first to check on the status of these hot wings. All I knew was that they were cold, and they needed to get all warm and cozy before entering my stomach. What better appliance to use than our friend the microwave?
I placed the box in the microwave and began the task of pushing the eighty buttons it takes to warm up my future snack for thirty seconds.
Once this is done, and I’m sure they’re really only going to be cooking for 30 seconds, I begin doing other things. I put some music on, check my email, and run to the bathroom to check the mirror to make sure it’s still the face I’m used to looking at and not someone else’s.
Then I slowly realize that there’s no way anyone could be properly roasting marshmallows in the dorms.
I follow the smell from my bathroom towards my microwave. My mind starts thinking of the horrible things that could be happening in there to make such an awful smell, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never smelled hot wings smell like that.
I peer through the window on the microwave and find, to my horror, that for once my imagination wasn’t enough to encompass what my eyes were seeing.
Flames covered the entire take out box. Not a few sparks. Not a small, candle-like flame. I’m talking a literal fire in my microwave.
Apparently, whatever place the guy got the hot wings from wrapped the hot wings in two layers of aluminum foil before putting them in the take out box.
If it were me, I would’ve just slapped the wings in the box and called it good.
But apparently that’s only me, because my roommate informed me that wrapping perishable foodstuffs, like hot wings, in tin foil is a very common occurrence and that I was stupid for ruining our snack.
I ran cups of water back and forth from the bathroom to put out the fire in the microwave. Once it was finally out, I carried the charred box into the bathroom like a pallbearer carries a coffin at a funeral. I placed its body in the tub and ran some more water on it, just in case.
The cremation ceremony that followed was a solemn one.
I then went back to look at the damage in the microwave. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers were definitely going to be on my list of cleaning supplies to buy.
After purchasing said Magic Erasers, I proceeded to cleaning the microwave.
Regardless of the claims that these Magic Erasers in fact do incorporate the use of magic in their cleaning powers, no amount of magic was able to completely clean the burn marks out of the microwave.
She still works, but I guarantee my friend the microwave, is no longer my friend.
This brings me to another story from my teenage years concerning a microwave and why I should never be allowed to use them. But I'll mention that next time, otherwise this blog would be WAY too long.
