I blew up my kitchen...sort of (Senior Prank)

         It was my senior year of high school, the time when cheating in order to graduate is acceptable and students expel the same effort in devising a plan to prank the school as they do studying for finals. My friends and I, aptly named the GBC (Gameboy Crew...we named ourselves that in order to simultaneously make it known that we were self-proclaimed nerds while additionally lampooning other groups at our school that made serious "crew" names for themselves) decided to make our mark in high school history. Our "senior prank" was two-fold and had the complexity of a simpleton.

          Phase 1 was to "T.P." the campus' trees with beer cans. In order to complete this mental-midget of a feat, we drank cases of beer every day after school and tied sets of two cans together so the string would get caught on the branches. We spared no expense and only bought the best...literally:

Drinking the Beast in high school was smart and I'll tell you why: When a twelver only costs $3.98 its much easier to hide the purchases from your parents. So a semester and a half of us playing beer pong in my buddy's garage while his mom was at work paid off when we had about 10 large garbage bags full of empty beer cans. Phase 1 of our operation was all set and on standby.

          Phase 2 was a little more complex. The "thing to do" at our high school was to throw eggs into the quad (the large open area in the center of campus where all of the students gathered during breaks). Problem was, we had a campus narc and a campus police officer. In order to evade capture people either threw from a distance, donned masks and ran at a proper speed necessary to outmaneuver the enemy (more like a brisk walk), or they just didn't give a crap and threw the eggs in broad daylight. My idea included a way to throw eggs in broad daylight yet still remain mostly undetectable. I was going to build multiple smoke bombs (recipe via the Jolly Roger Cookbook) and strategically place them around the quad to create both a distraction and a smoke curtain. In order to make my cloudy concoction, I visited the local nursery (before you think of something stupidly clever to say, it's the kind for trees...not babies) to pick up some tree-stump remover. That, mixed with everyday sugar and some heat produces a very effective smoke-bomb. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. <------ = my disclaimer.  

THIS:+ THIS: 

= DISASTER 

          

          Cooking the ingredients into a finished product seemed easy enough: add ingredients together, heat, stir. There was NO way I could mess this up...Apparently when the Jolly Roger Cookbook said "use low heat" it actually meant "use low heat". Patience is not one of my well-renown attributes so I was unable (rather unwilling) to see the risk in using medium low heat to speed things along. I will never forget what happened next. I was stirring the mixture in the pot on my parent's brand new Viking Range stovetop with the family dog (the most awesomest, yet mildly overweight, yellow lab ever) aiding in my endeavor...or she thought I was cooking food and was waiting for an opportunity to eat something. Whatever, same difference. Anyway, as I was stirring the ingredients, which were still in solid form, I noticed large air bubbles forming below the surface. All of the sudden chinese new year was happening in my kitchen: the air bubbles exploded, ignited, and turned the once powderish mixture into globs of flaming napalm that showered the kitchen. I somehow managed to turn off the heat, grabbed my fat dog and ran. Thick whitish-grey smoke filled every square inch of the house and was billowing out of the open windows and the front door. Neighbors that were meanwhile washing their cars, mowing their lawns, or doing whatever gated-community neighbors do on their weekends, blissfully ignored my predicament and continued their abstention from my seemingly emergency situation. When I realized I was on my own and deemed it safe, I returned to ground zero to assess the damages. I felt like a scumbag when I saw the aftermath.

          After the smoke finally cleared, the first thing I noticed was that the cabinets next to the range top were charred. Bad? Yes, but a failed cooking story could make for an adequate extenuation. Then I saw the floor. Remember those flaming globs of napalm? On a 10 foot by 3 foot rectangular plot of hardwood flooring there were a couple dozen inch-wide and half-inch deep holes created by caramelized regret. Needless to say I was f**ked because I could not think of a single excuse that would explain that away. Following this incident, an ironic summer of working in a warehouse loading and unloading Viking Range household equipment on and off trucks paid for the deductible on my parent's homeowners insurance. Yes, insurance covered this epic disaster despite my mother reiterating to the insurance agent that "my son was building a bomb" (she clearly didn't want me escaping full punishment).

          The silver lining in this story, outside the story itself, was that I escaped a bombardment of molten smoke-bomb mixture with only a few unnoticeable burns on my left arm and the knowledge that the smoke bomb definitely worked. Oh, and we littered the sh*t out of the campus foliage with a copious amount of beer cans that same night. GBC4life.

- LazyTheKid