Pop Corn Wars
I have heard people say that “life is a constant struggle“. I am a partial believer of that statement when things like ‘getting-up-in-the-morning-to-beat-the-school-bus’ are a part of my regular reality. Every weekday morning, I am confronted with another ‘beat-the-bus’ struggle to motivate my kids to get up…get up…get goin’. I suppose each of us can identify with the ‘struggles‘ we face each passing day. Struggle builds character, they say. This is something you would expect to hear from a parent, or a coach, or someone else equally as influential. I am fairly certain someone before me must have claimed ownership of that phrase, and I am quite certain the original author had been exposed to the joys of parenting.
For those of us with children and those who have mentored a child in some capacity, shaping our children’s character is a never-ending task. At best, you hope to set good examples, especially when the independent type is encountered. Being the parent of two independent types, one of which has her picture in the dictionary under ‘independent’, I can say I am hard-pressed to maintain high-quality examples. Often, we are the recipients of a little ‘character building’ of our own while pursuing activities designed to ‘build’ character for our children. Having your character ‘built’ while you are supposed to be doing the building will both surprise you and humble you with very little respect for your personal feelings, level of maturity, or professional expertise.
My daughter assisted in ‘building’ my character on an occasion while I tried to expand hers. The very fiber of my character was exposed to the bone repeatedly during the activity. I’m confident that I endured every emotion known to humankind in a period of less than five hours as I rode shotgun on my daughter’s fifth-grade Science Project. Most of what follows rarely rises above the fifth-grade level, including my own contribution to the whole character-building event.
Megan, my independent, type-A ten-year-old daughter, had the opportunity to have her own character affected during this joint project. She probably did. I can only hope that the impact was constructive, leaving few scars. If she gained as much as I did, I would rate the project as a huge success regardless of the actual grade. Her perspective on the project’s success was probably based on simply surviving another project with the big guy. In any event, my involvement was accepted unconditionally, no matter how frantic it became.
The ‘project’ was born one afternoon while the family was riding in the car to another dining-out adventure. My wife and I have found that some of our best ‘family time’ is spent in the car on the way to or from a restaurant. I am not sure it is always the best ‘quality’, but it is certainly a good opportunity to have some time with a captive audience. From the back seat, Megan read a note from her backpack regarding the upcoming school event, and I nearly ran into the rear of a slow-moving dump truck upon hearing the words ‘Science Fair.’
Being a project manager by trade, I immediately stepped up to take charge of ideas, methods, and procedures, and excitedly announced. “Cool, I’ve got some great ideas.”
My sixth-grade son, Michael, said loudly, “Don’t listen to him.”
My wife piled on and said, “Here we go. Do you remember the tragic Duke Power disqualification, honey?”
Defensively, I responded, “Hey, it wasn’t a disqualification; it was more along the lines of excessive guidance.”
My wife, Kimberly, made a point of reminding me of all the fun ‘we’ had the previous year when I constructed a working model of the electric company’s transmission facilities, including a mock-up of a nuclear reactor, pole-to-pole and underground cabling to the fuse box at a home. All that was done to prove my son Michael’s hypothesis that copper wire was a better conductor than rubber. That’s where the epic failure began, and I became tagged as a future liability.
I blatantly ignored the Science Fair pledge and applied the full power of every available technology to demonstrate my son’s hypothesis. You could say I bulldozed through his project, built on a 2-foot-by-3-foot board — only to lose the entire competition. A fifth-year senior could have done none of it. Our project did not just lose; it was in the way.
The surrounding story could only be written as either a dark mini-series or a tragic novel. I would not want to revisit that project nightmare ever again. I pledged to my wife that I would never get that involved again. I kept my word for months…mainly because it was months before the project’s due date. Urgency hovered at low tide. It was either low tide or that shrinking tide just before a tsunami rolls in. Not sure, but I do not want to get ahead of myself…
Here came the chance to redeem myself. Another year. Another project. Let’s do this! Why not? Two kids, two projects. I knew I would have to behave and felt confident I could meet that reality after recalling the demoralizing retreat from the year before as I limped out of the gymnasium, dragging a two-by-three-foot nuclear power plant behind me. I tucked my tail between my legs and retreated. What hurt most of all was my son saying, “Nice job, Dad!” in a really sarcastic tone. I really had no defense.
My actual job requires strong time management and project leadership to survive. Since I had survived to this point, it was only natural for me to think those skills would somehow be passed on genetically to my children. To some extent, they may have, but I am disappointed that they also acquired the skill of compressing most of the activity into the eleventh hour of a project’s life.
Knowing they were both predisposed to blatant procrastination, another genetic gift. My wife and I decided that regular low-key reminders should be communicated. They were. And low-key to no-key activity resulted. Not surprisingly, turning off the TV was our first major step toward focusing on ‘The Science Projects.’
The rest of the conversation centered on what the projects should be about.
Remembering my pledge, I opened with, “Why don’t we try to keep it simple?”
With Michael’s sarcastic muttering. “Yeah, like the reactor project.”
We swapped glares in the rearview mirror, but I had to agree.
For the most part, I had mostly gotten over the humiliation of dragging the reactor board out of his school gymnasium in defeat. I felt no humiliation from defeat because we lost the contest, but of being caught red-handed with “my” project that had Michael’s name on it. I knew I was guilty when I heard one of his classmates’ mothers offer her critique on Michael’s project.
“Mike did THAT by himself?”
I was thinking of ways to defend what ‘we’ had built together, but decided to cut my losses and limp to the car, dragging ‘our’ project behind me. Thinking back, we should not have destroyed the board; the electric company may have been able to use it for training their new technicians. It was definitely not a fifth-grade project. In Michael’s defense, the hypothesis was his own effort and well thought out. The epic failure came from the boxcar load of my ‘parental guidance’ that caused the meltdown.
My pledge had been made. I would not do that again.
Thanksgiving came and went, as did Christmas and the New Year break. Weeks had passed with regular, low-key reminders that the ‘Science Project’ was due in February. Our conversation several months ago had only identified Megan’s project. Nothing further had been done, and the topic had never been revisited.
Michael’s project was to compare which boiled faster, cold water or hot water. We got through it without mishap or property damage, but the kitchen had become a sauna. My pledge remained intact, and the stage was set for some serious bonding. Megan’s decision to compare popcorn brands had been made. The due dates were set. It was now the fourth week of January, and both kids were having difficulty locating the original project list that described the guidelines for what the finished project should look like.
We were approaching critical mass again. Tick Tock…
I had minimal input into ‘selling’ the project over the last couple of months. The theme still seemed simple, and my pledge was still intact. With confidence soaring, Megan’s simple popcorn-popping theme would pose a low challenge. Which brand popped the fastest formed her mission. Simple. Minor parental supervision required…I thought. The fact that we nearly destroyed the popcorn popper two-thirds of the way through the project should give you an indication of things to come. Who knew that popping popcorn would become a full-contact event?
Remember, struggle builds character…
The secret to smooth project implementation is proper delegation of responsibility. When using electrical kitchen appliances that have not been stress-tested in accordance with the scientific method, empowerment is not an option. Megan’s role involved measuring popcorn from three brands and recording the results from our battery of tests. She took great care to keep the brands separate and accurately recorded the hard-earned data. We worked together smoothly.
Neither of us realized how hot the popcorn popper would get when popping only one kernel at a time during our first series of tests. We also did not account for the fact that repeatedly heating the popper would put us at DefCon 2. We are talking about a near-nuclear event! That sucker got hot!
The fact that the popper became increasingly dangerous to use made it easier for me to justify my involvement. I did not want Megan to be the one to reload the beast….and neither did she. My pledge remained unbroken. I felt good. I bonded with my daughter. We were building character.
Reality arrived about the time stupid showed up with a huge crash as pieces of popcorn popper shrapnel whistled past my ear. A big wooden cutting board that leaned up against the new wallpaper to protect it from hot splattering oil had worked its way into position to fall forward onto the popper — which was peaking at that moment. Megan and I were not prepared for the character-building we were about to enjoy.
Our popcorn popper was the model with the little gizmo that spins in the middle to distribute heat to every kernel evenly. That neat little performance-improving feature is why I felt that using this particular popper would give us good quality control on our project. And it did. That performance-improving feature also contributed to us getting scorched equally badly by every kernel that landed on the dog and on us when it exploded under the weight of the cutting board.
We scrambled for the exit as the spray of hot kernels and boiling canola oil arched toward us. The dog ran in place on the smooth floor, nails clicking, as she tried to get out of the way. It is funny, I never knew dog toenails scratching on vinyl flooring could create sparks. But I swear that dog hunkered down and kicked up sparks as she bolted for anywhere else.
Evenly heated corn kernels were bouncing off everything and everyone within fifteen feet of the popper when I realized the situation quickly escalated to something much worse. The half-gallon jug of canola oil lay perfectly horizontal on the countertop next to the wounded popper. The cap for the container of oil contributed to the character-building-of-the-moment by being about eighteen inches from where it should have been — on the jug — screwed on tightly.
Visions of the Exxon Valdese and Olympic speed skating gold medals flashed through my mind as I skated faster than Eric Heiden or Apolo Ohno, toward the counter to staunch the surging flow of oil. The jug of canola oil alternated between gulping air and pouring a cupful of oil onto the new vinyl floor every second.
I considered dropping the ‘F” bomb.
Megan remained uninjured, at least not on the outside, and sat on a little footstool in the corner, both hands over her mouth. The dog returned and appeared highly focused on a petroleum extraction project of her own. I am convinced the stupid dog would eat anything and was highly engaged.
I am not proud of what followed.
The echoes of the explosion and screams of panic had died as I decided what to do. The first action that came to mind involved drop-kicking the dog into the den, a distance of about thirty feet. Now, I have never kicked a dog, but it seemed an appropriate course of action at the time, given I had no idea how sick pure canola oil could make a dog. I never kicked the dog, but did swoosh my foot in her general direction.
God punished me for the thought, as the act of swinging my leg in the dog’s direction demonstrated the results of lubrication under pressure. Combine 250 pounds standing on one leg while kicking the other…add gravity, a quarter-inch canola oil, and new tile flooring that matched the wallpaper I was trying to protect, and you have a rapidly deteriorating situation.
I did not go all the way down, but fighting gravity was a mistake. Muscles pulled and strained in my heroic efforts as I danced in the same spot to stay out of the oil slick. No way was I going down, but in some respects, I did go down — way down, as the ‘F’ word queued up and was released at volume to embellish my command to the dog.
“Get the f— outta’ here, you floor-licking sack of doggie treats!”
Yep, I had just arrived at the bottom.
Megan, still seated with both hands over her mouth, did not move. As I looked at that poor, helpless child, I could see evidence that something else had been genetically transmitted to her…by my wife. I recognized the look in her eyes, and I knew my outburst landed me in deep doodah on the wrong side of a line I shouldn’t have crossed. She didn’t have to say a word.
After cleaning the floor, we still had several more iterations of popping left to meet the requirements of the scientific method. When Megan regained her ability to speak, she put everything into perspective by whispering in disbelief.
“Oh my God!”
She was not supposed to say ‘God’ in that context, and she knew it. But we were still at DefCon 2, and she knew that the pressure of the moment, combined with my screaming vulgarities at the dog, would grant her some grace. This project had gone nuclear…without a reactor.
I was impressed by Megan’s focus and perseverance as she bent over the mortally wounded popper and asked,
“Dad, do you think it’s dead?”
She knew we had more to do. She also knew we were not going to buy another popper and, I could tell, she was ready to roll the dice and plow ahead with the crippled beast. She sighed in relief when I picked up the smoldering carcass to assess the probability of electrocution if and when I reattached the power cord.
Damage control reported that the popper was 85% reusable and 350% more dangerous if used. With one handle left, the plastic cover was severely cracked, and the legs no longer kept the popper level. It was a crap shoot to finish the popping. When you consider that it only had three legs to begin with, you can imagine the stability of the device when a small portion of each of them was missing. The gaping hole left by the large piece of shrapnel that was blown by my ear earlier gave a bird’s-eye-view into the intestines of the beast.
Megan crossed her fingers, and I plugged the beast back into the wall socket. Sparks did not fly, and the nearby light fixtures did not flicker, leading me to believe the fuses were not blown. For a few minutes more, I remained in the driver’s seat. The beast immediately sprang to life. We both held our breath and pressed onward.
I braved a closer inspection of the still-radiating crevasse on the base’s side. I diligently searched for control rods normally found in a reactor, but found none. They must have been part of the shrapnel I dodged earlier. I knew we had only a few more minutes before the core would melt down completely.
Inside were little spring-shaped wires glowing horribly red, while the performance-improving swirling gizmo evenly distributed heated oil. The little swirling gizmo was now scraping up a dark, gritty sprinkling of ‘on-stick’ seasoning and adding an acrid stench of the popper’s impending death. We no longer had the desire to eat any more of our results.
The popper appeared to die as we recorded our final data collection. With our last batch removed from the jaws of the dying beast, I swear I heard it moan. The odor of burnt popcorn, overheated canola oil, singed dog hair, and mortally wounded popper made memories we would not soon forget. Without ceremony, the popper was laid to rest in the trash dumpster outside. It was still hot.
Megan withdrew to the safety of her room to fire up the computer to compile the results of our efforts. With no assistance from me and minor help with the laser printer, Megan did the rest. Pledge still intact.
I do not know whether much character-building took place for Megan that afternoon. Mine was certainly realigned. The dog seemed largely unaffected, except for altered bowel function for a day or so. But the pressure was off, and the project work was completed on time. Out of 100-plus fifth-graders, Megan’s project won third place.
The Science Fair officials held an awards ceremony for the top three finishers. Megan was proud of the results, and I was proud of her. Without her, the project would have been aborted when the popper first exploded. She earned the award. For me, I was satisfied for one significant reason —my pledge remained intact.
The popper has still not been replaced.
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