Smoke on the Chocolate

The other night, Chris wanted a little something sweet after dinner. So he put some chocolate chips into the microwave to melt them down. Before I elaborate any further, I should probably point out that Chris has a history of confusion related to what exactly it is possible to prepare in the microwave.

I am remembering an incident from my college years in which Chris attempted to make a chocolate chip cookie in my dorm room microwave by placing a golfball sized blob of pre-made cookie dough in a teacup and nuking it for about 4 minutes. Much to the chagrin of my unsuspecting roommate, and the rest of the residents on our hall, at the end of the evening we had only a smoldering lump of chocolate chip charcoal, a destroyed teacup and a stern warning from the RA.

Fast forward about 9 years to the other night. Chris puts a cereal bowl of chocolate chips into the microwave sets the timer for ONE MINUTE AND THIRTY SECONDS and walks back into the living room to sit down. Upon hearing the beep Chris walked over, opened the microwave door and out billowed a cloud of ash and smoke approximately equal in size to that volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Upon seeing this Chris's first though was likely "Oh crap, smoke detector" followed shortly thereafter by "SMOKE DETECTOR... JUST OUTSIDE SLEEPING BABY'S ROOM... OHCRAPOHCRAPOHCRAP!" It was at this point that he took off running in desperate race to beat the chocolate smoke cloud to the smoke detector. He was racing. The air. Savor that image for a moment. Are you savoring?

See, the thing is, he was in his socks on our hardwood floor. So his mad dash didn't result in immediate forward progress. I sat there watching Chris run in place, not very much unlike a cartoon character, encased in a cloud of black smoke from the neck down for several seconds before he actually started to move forward. And I was able to retain my composure in silence until the "Chariots of Fire" song popped into my head. It was pretty much all over after that. He made it to the smoke detector before the chocolate cloud but it didn't matter because by that point I was literally crowing with laughter twice as loud as any smoke detector.