It was getting late on a Sunday night. In a nameless dorm of a nameless school with some nameless people, there are preparations under way for a bacon-themed festival. Each of the floors was preparing its own treat, each concoction a secret from the rest.
At some point, one of the floors' cooking set off a smoke detector, and for a few minutes the whole building was standing outside in the slight rain, shivering, wondering who it was who set the smoke detectors off.
Eventually, without figuring out which floor it had been, the groups flooded back to their common rooms. The group on the second floor, in particular, is relieved that they weren't the ones, and got back to cooking bacon cookies. They were having a few potential future students, or as the current students called them, prospies, staying with them, and a couple of them were helping bake the cookies. One of the current students put a few dollops of dough onto a baking pan, and put in the oven. Yet another was busy making sure the cooks were doing exactly what they were supposed to, and still others were preoccupied with tomorrow's physics homework.
All was well for about half an hour. It was only then that someone took a sniff and pondered aloud, "Does anyone else smell smoke?" So everybody took a sniff and, sure enough, some other people smelled smoke. And someone looked around and noticed it was coming from the oven.
Different people think in different ways. The girl who had seemed to be in charge grabbed a big ol' fan and moved it to blow the smoke out the windows, while another guy decided that it would be best if the fire alarm didn't go off twice in a night, and ran across the room, jumped on a table, and covered the smoke alarm with his hands. He later was given a plastic bucked to use, and holding this bucket over the smoke alarm became the job of multiple tall people, including, at times, one of the prospective student's.
Upon opening the oven, it was clear why there was so much smoke. The baking tray no longer looked like a baking tray: it instead looked like the ceiling of a cave in the middle of a blizzard: rough and uneven with giant icicles of plastic pointing down. Yes, plastic. The baking tray was not actually a metal baking tray, it was just a plastic. And in the oven, it had decided to melt. Hence smoke, fumes, and at least an hour's work trying to work that plastic off every surface of the oven, as well as the oven racks.
And then they went back to baking.
Oh, and of course, the cookies from the plastic tray, along with all the plastic, were thrown out.
Now this seems like a ridiculous tale, but it's true. I promise. I don't believe this would be a daily dilemma for college students, but there was one thing about this whole affair that stood out to me: not a single adult came by to check on the group. The only people involved were the students baking in the common room. I'm not at all surprised that kids could figure out solutions to these problems, but that they are left to it is a reminder to me that I am growing up.
No comments:
Post a Comment