People get roasted over stuff like this
The bright sun is brilliant, flames are crackling and family is gathering.
It’s the first fire of 2018 and we’ve invited my sister-in-law’s family to join us for an impromptu celebration of spring.
We’re having cold beer and hot dogs.
The latter were surprisingly hard to find on a holiday Monday. With grocery stores closed, it actually took stops at five convenience stores to acquire two packs of wieners. Stocks were depleted.
“The weather is finally nice and everyone must have the same idea,” five different clerks said.
No real surprise, because there are a few things as simplistic, enjoyable and require as little cleanup as roasting wieners over an open fire. (And, yes, I know, wieners are unhealthy.)
Anyway, with chairs circled around dancing flames, it’s time to put the day’s struggles with wiener procurement in the rearview mirror.
The grown-ups are gathered, sipping cold ones, shooting the breeze and staring at the fire, an activity one friend calls “Watching Caveperson TV.”
Call it what you like, there’s something calming and relaxing about it.
And, today, thanks to a new cooking concept, that experience is going to be even more chill.
Because we won’t be roasting the wieners by hand. We’re going to wrap them in tin foil and place ’em in an empty milk carton.
Apparently, once the carton has burned, the wieners are ready to unwrap and eat. And you thought the iphone was innovation at its finest!
Our guests seem mildly impressed with just sitting back, and not having to park too close to the flames — straining their backs and scorching their eyebrows — to cook a wiener on a stick.
So, with the fire bright and the conversations brighter, we toss the carton full of wieners into the hot coals.
We all marvel at the simplicity and continue conversing.
I get so wrapped up in the exchange that I totally forget about the cooking carton. Which is my bad. Because before long, the carton is long gone and the fire, as if it were a rogue state, attacks.
A foil-covered wiener shoots out of the flames like an intercontinental ballistic missile. It almost hits my wife in the leg. She is OK.
But WOW!
If ever you want to see adults deal with laughter and fear at the same, have them sit around a fire pit that’s shooting overcooked wieners at high speeds.
Between guffaws, everyone scrambles for cover. For a few seconds, as we’re expecting more rockets, it’s pure pandemonium.
As a host — and someone who spent two hours finding the now detonating wieners — I’m concerned protecting our guests, saving the sausages and not getting shot in the leg.
As I hover cautiously over the fire, another one shoots straight at my sister-in-law’s partner.
He dodges the dog with a Matrix-like move.
I’m too afraid and too busy to give that the laughter it deserves and “frantically fish the fiery franks out of fire” (say that five time fast, please).
Some are very, very well done. Others are half-exploded. A few are missing.
In the end, though, all dogs are eaten, no one walks away hungry, and we share a laugh.
It may not have gone quite as planned, but on this day, there are no losers, only wieners. Steve Bartlett is an editor with Saltwire Network. He dives into the Deep End Mondays to escape reality and relish. Reach him via email at steve.bartlett@thetelegram.com.