Welcome to the fifth installment of my irregularly-published feature on Bevboy's Blog: Stupid Things Bevboy Has Done, or STBHD for short. This series is all about dumb things I have done over the many years of my life, or the dumb things I have had done to me. The net result is my feeling, well, stupid.
This time, I'll discuss a science experiment that went horribly wrong and could have had catastrophic consequences for my family.
I was 13 or so.
(Yeah. Another story of my teenage angst-ridden years. It will be the last one for a while.)
I was up late one Friday night, because I was in the habit of sleeping in until noon on Saturdays back then. I wondered what it would be like to heat some water in my parents' metal tea kettle. This was before we knew the dangers of chemicals leeching into water as a result of molecular excitement. Don't judge us.
I heated the water in the kettle. And watched.
And watched.
And watched a little bit more.
The water boiled until there was no water left. I did not remove the kettle from the stove.
All of a sudden, there were these horrible smells, burning odors, emanating from the kettle. If we had had a smoke detector it would have gone off. I grabbed a towel and removed the kettle from the stove and tossed it into the sink and poured water on it.
The next morning I told my parents a fictionalized account of what had happened the night before. Dad went out and bought a new kettle that day, and I never even thought about touching it again.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Next time: Check front and back, 35+ years apart.
Bevboy
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