French Fries

The other day, feeling an unusual spirit of adventure come upon me, and also being near death from lack of food, I decided to undertake the thrilling and terrifying quest of cooking myself a lunch. Tis not a quest for the faint hearted, let me assure you.

We had just purchased a deep fry cooker, and we had a large quantity of potatoes on hand. I seized one with the intention of turning it into those delicious morsels, French fries. I washed it.  Then I contemplated how dangerous knives are, and how time consuming it is to cut up a potato, so I grabbed our apple slicer and used that to create potato wedges. It struck me as cute how similar potatoes and apples look when you core and slice them. I then dumped them into our deep fryer.

On this particular day we had been watching a Shakespeare play on our television, as my little brother needed to watch it for a class that he was in. We had all had a good laugh at the language they used in those days, and had immediately started conversing in such dialogue ourselves. And may I say, cooking while using Shakespearean language helps to dissolve the stress typically involved.

After I had started the French fries cooking I wandered out of the kitchen and picked up a book and began to read. After a while I was aroused. “Behold, it seemeth to me that this deep fryer is emanating smoke.” Observed my younger brother. I leaped up from my seat and rushed over. “By my troth lad, it seemeth that thy observation is correct!” I exclaimed. I reached over and lifted the lid, and in my haste I allowed the burning hot edge to sear my wrist. The pain was exquisite.

I clutched my wrist and leaped in the air with the grace of a ballet dancer, shrieking all the while. The leap was not a large enough reaction to adequately reflect the amount of pain I was experiencing, so I swiftly ran up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the opposite wall, all the while holding my wrist and exclaiming such things as “Forsooth, cooking seemeth to me a treacherous activity, thusly I shall engage in it NEVERMORE!!!” I then rushed over to the sink and turned the water on, anticipating the relief that would come when cool water washed over my wounded appendage. But when I stuck my wrist under the stream of water, I found that it was boiling hot, which multiplied the pain sevenfold. “Ahhhhh! The treachery!!” I cried, collapsing on the floor and launching into a monologue. “Am I to find no peace, no respite, in all this cruel world?!  I, who am void of offense against all my fellow men?! As loathe as I am to part from ye all, I feel that my hour has come. I have been overcome by the pain of the world. Farewell, my fellow citizens, my countrymen, my true lo….” Here I was interrupted by my brother, who rather abruptly informed me that he had turned the water on cold for me. I humbly arose and stuck my wrist under the lifesaving stream and the pain was eased.

I am sad to say that the French fries burned themselves to death during the episode, and my wrist developed a rather nice blister. But my dear family cooked me up some more French fries to compensate for my loss, and the blister soon healed, so I was happy. As a result of this experience I recognized that Shakespeare was a genius. His language style is obviously tailored to fit the needs of those who prepare food, and I have taken it upon myself to speak like him whenever I am cooking. So thus this story ends.