When you live in Los Angeles, you pretty much don’t ever go camping.
You could surely go to the local supermarket and pick up one of those Hershey’s S’mores candy bars, which includes chocolate and marshmallow and graham cracker. You could then go home and set up a big tent in your backyard and power up the flashlights and sit in the dark while listening to the freeway buzz away and eat your little candy bar and all would probably be fine.
I don’t wanna be fine. I want a real S’more.
So I went down to the local supermarket and instead of buying the already completed S’more, I purchased a bag of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers and a bunch of Hershey’s chocolate bars. I paid for my items in the neato-keeno easy-check out line (where you are convinced you’re having WAY MORE FUN doing the checkout process all by yourself instead of inundating the people who get paid to do stuff like that with your groceries) and raced home to start the “camping-out” campire process.
Well, when you’re living in an urban jungle, the closest open flame just happens to only come in fours. Four burners, that is. I powered up the front right burner (the front left just seems to far to the left and the two back ones are, well, too far back) and opened up the marshmallow package.
I pulled out a plate, cracked a huge graham cracker in two, and placed four halves on the plate. I then took two Hershey’s chocolate bars and broke those up so that each of the two S’mores would have a layer of chocolate. Then I pulled out (in lieu of a branch from a tree in the wilderness) a fork, pierced a huge marshmallow and proceeded to turn it above the open flame.
Wallah! Instant indoor campfire! My Los Angeles S’more experiment was coming along nicely.
I, personally, don’t like the black marshmallows. I knew a bunch of kids in camptimes who used to say that eating the black stuff was great for you, but for me I loved the golden-brown marshmallow for my S’mores. And I was doing damn well, turning and rotating my fork above the flame as the white-devil began to turn a golden hue and expand and enlarge.
I eyed the plate. The chocolate and graham crackers. Waiting and ready. I licked my lips, hungry for the sweet nectar I was about to taste.
The marshmallow shivered around the fork — loose as the flame heated up the insides of the sugary treat. I poked and prodded, making sure the marshmallow was in good shape, loose and ready — and pulled the fork away from the flame. Placing it atop one half of a S’more, I closed the other side on top of it, pulling the fork away from my now completed S’more.
I looked at the fork, which still had some gooey goodness on it. Mmmmm.
…and proceeded to stick the flaming hot fork with marshmallow residue into my mouth, at which point I closed my mouth on the fork to scrape the candy from the hot metal spears.
I heard the sizzling of my lips before I felt the pain. The pain, that lasted a little over a full week.
—
Some may call it survival of the fittest. Others, like me, would call it hunger induced stupidity. And a few others might just laugh their ass off.
All good.
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