Looks like another freshman tried to make popcorn.

This semester, I am living in a big-girl apartment instead of slumming it in the dorms at college. I am too good for dorms and can’t ruin my reputation running around with the wrong sort of people who choose to call these heathen-holes “home”. To be fair, the dorms are actually quite nice. They were built in the something-or-other century and have lovely architectural design (read: fancy pants) that will make you unconsciously raise your pinkie finger and start wearing a monocle.  But they’re still dorms. And as such, they have major drawbacks. For example, you have to be ready at all times for errant freshmen who wander across your path and have yet to develop social skills resulting in awkward small-talk while you microwave your oatmeal when really, that situation calls for an in-depth analysis of the sociology of breakfast foods in America. Obviously.

Sometimes, a cat – illegally kept in the dorm by an aspiring-future-cat-lady student – will escape from its enclave and make a beeline for your open door and straight to the bathroom where it will hop in the bathtub and look up at you expectantly (this happened).

You also are constantly subjected to idiocy: that of yours and that of others. Figure 1: fire alarms. Every year I have lived in the dorms, some person has set a bag of popcorn on fire. IT’S A BAG OF KERNELS THAT YOU PUT IN THE MICROWAVE FOR THREE MINUTES, HOW DO YOU MESS THAT UP?? Best get a refund from the college because you have learned NOTHING important. And, to compound matters, this person (let’s be real, it’s always a freshman) has to be a popcorn pyromaniac during the wee hours of the morning. So, the entire dorm has to evacuate with their fuzzy slippers on and unironically clutching stuffed animals, looking like disheveled hobbits after a trip to Mordor (and back).

Embarrassingly, I have also set off the dorm fire alarm. I was cooking bacon in my room despite the rule against cooking and electric burners in the dorm. (NOBODY SEPARATES ME FROM MY BACON.) After successfully sizzling up some pig bits, I noticed that there were a few stray pieces of bacon burnt on the bottom of the pan. No problem, I will simply pour ice-cold water into this saucepan which has hot oil and burning pork morsels in it, thus, no cooked-on bacon… GENIUS!! 

Well, I idiotically poured the water into the saucepan filled with flaming pig remains (sidenote: way less appetizing describing it that way rather than just calling it, ‘bacon’), and a huge plume of smoke immediately filled the room. I felt like I was standing in the shadow of the volcanic cloud of ash and debris from Mt. Vesuvius, it was that serious. The fire alarm went off and panic seized me. My first instinct was to hide the evidence from my illegal cooking activities (I stashed the still-burning-hot saucepan in the bathroom with the perfume of acrid smoke wafting out. They’ll never check here! And then I opened my window and did what can only be described as a panicked frolicking as I tried to herd, coax, and force the smoke to make its way out through the window instead of loitering around like teenagers outside of a pharmacy (that’s still a thing, right?). By some miracle, the fire alarm turned off and I breathed a sigh of relief – probably inhaling some smoke while doing so. But yes, I was an idiot.  I haven’t eaten bacon to this day…

Just kidding. Give me bacon, or give m- no, just give me the bacon.

- Daughter