Hot Potatoes

          The day Chiquita burned her hands on hot mashed potatoes we had a good laugh. Well, Chiquita wasn’t laughing but the rest of us were. We were at lunch in the cafeteria near the microwave ovens when the incident occurred. I was heating up some spaghetti. Chiquita put a large plastic baggie filled with mashed potatoes into the other microwave oven. I told Chiquita that she might want to use a microwave dish next time, since baggies could explode and spew their contents all over the inside of the ovens. I was standing there waiting for my spaghetti to finish when Eugenia walked up to use the microwave. She saw Chiquita getting ready to take the potatoes out of the microwave oven with her bare hands and advised her to use some paper towels so she wouldn’t burn herself.

          I was just about to offer Chiquita some paper towels but she pushed me aside and said she knew what she was doing. The next thing we all heard was a loud screech.

          "Aaaiiiiiieeeeeeee!!!"

          Chiquita quickly got rid of the hot mashed potatoes by slamming them to the floor where they splattered everywhere. Eugenia and I were both concerned that Chiquita had really hurt herself but she said she’d gotten rid of the potatoes so quickly that she wasn’t seriously hurt. Eugenia and I laughed and agreed that Yes, she certainly had gotten rid of them quickly. She hadn’t just dropped them but had slam-dunked them to the floor. After Chiquita had cleaned up her mess, she joined us at our table. I gave her some of my spaghetti since her lunch was all gone.

          Later, back in the office, Eugenia and I related the incident to our coworkers and were having a hearty laugh about how Chiquita had slam-dunked the potatoes to the floor. Chiquita came up behind us and sprinkled some Parmesan cheese in our hair.

          "Hey, why did you do that?" I asked.

          "Because you’re both a couple of rats," she proclaimed.

          I think that although she hadn’t scorched her hands, her pride was stinging still and it smarted even more every time Eugenia and I laughed about the mashed potato slam-dunking incident.

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