Could you repeat the question?
At 10:44 p.m. on Sunday night I received a notification telling me a text has just come through my cellphone. From the alert sound I knew it was from my son Jacob before I even pick it up.
His text read: ‘Hey, how long does it take to microwave a 25-pound turkey?’
Am I seriously reading this, I thought to myself? Does this kid actually think you can microwave a turkey? And not only that, but he’s asking me for cooking advice?
Many years ago we were going to have Christmas supper at my house and so I was tasked with cooking the turkey. The turkey was bigger than any roaster I had so we assembled a make-shift pan for it.
Long story short, I burnt the turkey.
And my family has never let me forget it.
A few years after the turkey incident the idea of having Christmas supper at my house came up again. As I talked to my mother on the phone I could hear my sister in the background asking, “Will the turkey be burnt?”
In other words, I’m probably the last person to be seeking turkey advice from.
Still, when I read Jacob’s text I thought to myself, even I know that’s not a good idea. Had he been standing in front of me I would have laughed in his face.
My immediate reaction was to screenshot his text and send it to a friend:
‘OMG! Look at what Jacob just asked me!!!’
My next reaction was to post a screenshot on my Facebook book page:
‘OMG! Look at what Jacob just asked me!!!’
Then, worried he was serious, and fearing for his future, my reaction was, ‘OMG? Look at what Jacob just asked me???’
I responded back to his text:
1)This is one of the weirdest questions I’ve ever been asked.
2)I haven’t a clue. I’ve never attempted this.
3)Maybe try Googling the question?
4) . Is this for a snack?
(I felt compelled to ask the last question given the time of night.)
He didn’t reply back so I figured he had turned to the Internet for an answer.
The next day I was talking to him on the phone and asked if he ever figured out his turkey dilemma. It’s then that he told me this was a prank whereby kids texted their moms and asked ‘How long does it take to microwave a 25-pound turkey?’ to see what their response would be.
“Did I have the right response?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
And so rather than Google cooking time, I Googled the question and read the responses of other moms.
Said one: “You cannot microwave a turkey. Buy a cooked one if the oven doesn’t work.”
Said another mom when her daughter told her a coworker had volunteered her to bring in a turkey: “OMG!!! You cannot cook a turkey in the microwave!!!” The mom then went on to ask who volunteers to bring in a turkey? “You were raised to always volunteer for paper products or chips,” she said.
Said another mom when asked how long it would take: “Probably a month.”
Then there was this response from a kind-hearted grandmother: “Oh honey, you can’t cook a turkey in the microwave. Bring it over and I’ll cook it for you.”
Darn it. If I had Googled the question right away myself, and clued in that I was bring pranked, I could have had more fun with my response. What a missed opportunity.
I would have told Jacob: “You’ll have to defrost it in the microwave first for three hours and 27 minutes. I’d take out the turn table plate in the microwave and just lie the turkey flat so it doesn’t rotate, because you wouldn’t want the legs to keep banging the side of the microwave on every rotation. But it’s really important to make sure you put the turkey the right way when you lay it flat, otherwise it’ll be a disaster. You’ll know which way to do it. You should only set the microwave for intervals of 10 minutes because you’ll want to open the door and let it cool for a couple of minutes. If you don’t too much heat could build up inside and it could explode. That happened to a friend of mine once. It was really bad. I hadn’t thought of microwaving the turkey but you’re right, it would be faster. I think that’s how I’ll cook mine next time. After all, it would be less time for it to catch on fire! LOL”
I wonder what he would have thought of that response. Maybe he would have been the one asking, “am I seriously reading this?”
The whole thing reminded me of a time many years ago when my son Justin was quite young. He wanted some Kraft Dinner for lunch. He said to me, “you have to boil the water. Do you know how to do that?”
The sad part about the question is, he was serious.