Yesterday was a good day. I’m nearly complete with My Teacher is a Werewolf. I’m in the wrap up part of the story and I plan on introducing a little something that’ll carry over into the next story.I do intend to continue with the series. These characters are just too much fun to give up on now. The pacing is right, the flow is right, the interactions are fun. The entire thing just works.

I had made a comment to my favorite daughter last night while I was writing about the werewolf. I told her I just made one of the characters tell the werewolf “Imma pop a cap in your ass.” My favorite daughter, ever the witty one, came back with “You’re writing ‘My Teacher is a Donkey’?” Oddly enough it took me a moment to get that one, but oh did I laugh. I’m raising this one right. 🙂

I made her breakfast this morning and a little butter from the spatula dribbled down the side of the pan and snapped, crackled, and popped. As it caught fire my brain went from oh, it’s non-dairy butter and it burns. That’s sort of like non-dairy creamer that burns. That reminds me of a time in high school…

My friend and I were at Denny’s. At the time I didn’t drink coffee (I only did for a short time in the Navy). We both had lighters, but didn’t smoke (I didn’t start that until I was in the Navy and quit 6 years later). We had issues with lighting things on fire. Small things we could watch burn. We even turned lighters into rockets by lighting one end on fire.

We cleaned out the packs of sugar and non-dairy creamer. Not sure to this day why we did that. I know we used to do sugar shots (something my favorite daughter now does). As for the non-dairy creamer, well, I think we took them just to take them.

Later that day we were setting empty sugar packets on fire. We melted a pile of sugar. We lit a pack of non-dairy creamer on fire. All of this was very non-exciting, but made us giggle. Until that fateful moment when my friend put some non-dairy creamer in his hand and tried to lite it on fire. In his hand. Yeah, we weren’t the brightest tools in the shed. Of course he burned his hand and when he felt pain, he threw the non-dairy creamer.

If you know anything about non-dairy creamer and fire you can imagine the result. It wasn’t a lot, but the small, crackly fireball was cool enough that we went through all the packets of non-dairy creamer very quickly and needed to get more.

Over the next week we collected many-a-packet from Denny’s and were usually not to be found without a few. One day my friend had a lot in his pocket and we both had a non-class that we could get by without going to. He emptied all the packets into my hands and I went to the second floor. He stood at the bottom and lit his lighter. I very slowly allowed the non-dairy creamer to fall between my hands. Very slowly. I kept my eye on everything. I wanted to make sure it fell at an even rate. This was going to be…

DUDE!

I looked down and saw the column of fire climbing quickly toward me. Being a sensible kid, I threw the remaining non-dairy creamer into the air to make sure it didn’t get on me.

Side note, this was in the day before cameras in schools and inefficient fire systems.

I hit the deck as the billowing mass of non-dairy creamer erupted into a giant fireball. I could only watch and laugh nervously as it rolled across the ceiling. My friend, wise as he was, ran up the stairs. He and I did our best to look nonchalant as we double-timed it to the class we should have been in. We were only in there for five or ten minutes before the bell rang and everyone poured into the hallway. It was difficult not to laugh as people exclaimed about the disgusting smell in the hall and wondered what had happened in the science class. It may have only been the two of us that noticed the large black stain on the ceiling.

I’ve known about non-dairy creamer since the 80s. So it was surprising when I watched the mythbusters episode where the created a non-dairy creamer cannon. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard during an episode. Sure they’re always filled with laughs (square wheels, 55 gallon drum rockets, well almost everything they do on the show), but this one struck home with me because I’d been there. Done that. Just not nearly as large as they did. Here’s the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRw4ZRqmxOc.

It’s funny how something so mundane can get your brain running in an entirely different direction. Today I was going to blog about ducks. Perhaps I’ll do that tomorrow.

Until Tomorrow!

WOO WOO!