WHY THE MICROWAVE WAS INVENTED
Still trying to get a feel for his new apartment, a young Arlington man decided he would cook himself dinner one night to save a few bucks for weekend festivities.
Now, his cooking skills were limited to the microwave and toaster oven. But on this night, he decided to cook a pizza in the oven. “How hard could it be?” he wondered aloud.
But before he even got the pizza in the oven, his smoke detector went off. He opened his door to let whatever was setting off the alarm filter out, and returned to the kitchen. Again, the alarm started beeping.
Seeing no smoke, the man decided he would unhook the device and return to cooking. “I won’t burn the apartment down cooking a pizza,” he vowed.
But when he went to unscrew the detector, flames and sparks shot out from the device. Somehow he had managed to light his smoke detector on fire instead of his pizza.
Building maintenance came and handled the wayward detector. Cooking his dinner the following night, the man decided to never venture from microwavable Hot Pockets and chicken nuggets again.
METRO SAMARITAN
A man and his young daughter boarded a relatively empty Metro train at Woodley Park one morning during rush hour.
There were seats open, but as the man and his daughter walked through the car, the energetic youngster declared, for all riders to hear, “I just want a window seat.”
None were available.
A middle-aged man smiled at her, stood up, and said, “Want this one?” And he moved to another seat.
AT LEAST IT WASN’T A RENOIR
At the National Gallery of Art one day, a young art-lover grew weary. The boy, about 8 years old, sighed and leaned against a wall, resting one high-topped sneaker behind him.
What he did not realize was that he was leaning on art: Sol Lewitt’s 1971 “Wall Drawing #65,” to be exact.
His horrified mother quickly pulled him off the drawing when she noticed him slouched indifferently against its base.
THE OLYMPIC SHOWER SPRINT
A Silver Spring resident raced home from her master’s swim team practice to catch the Olympic swimmers. But NBC was showing men’s gymnastics, so she jumped into the shower to rinse off all the chlorine.
She was about halfway through when her boyfriend shouted that the men’s 100-meter freestyle was coming up. Now, she already knew the result, but really wanted to see the race. She leapt out of the shower, soap still on her legs, conditioner in her hair. She wrapped herself in a towel, and started sprinting for the kitchen, when her boyfriend announced, “Wait, they’re showing a short.”
Back into the shower she went. The woman rinsed off the soap and started rinsing out her hair, when her boyfriend’s voice shouted again: “They’re on the blocks!”
She jumped out of the shower, dripping wet and still with conditioner in her hair, and threw on her damp towel. She ran into the kitchen, dripping all over the floor, and watched America’s Nathan Adrian beat Austrialia’s James Magnussen by a mere one-hundredth of a second.
And then the woman returned to the bathroom, where she calmly finished her nice, hot shower.
Please send interesting anecdotes to [email protected]. Be sure to include your email and phone contacts.
