School has finally let out for the summer. For parents this is the beginning of a three-month long nightmare where we suddenly have to be responsible for our own children all day long. No more letting the state provide free babysitting for the little monsters 30 hours out of every week.
For my wife, however, summer vacation is a much-needed break. She is an elementary school principal and to her, summer vacation means about eight weeks of time away from the hundreds of children that crawl around her school campus like ants on a dropped lollipop. Although we still have to take care of our own two little disappointments … I mean, our little darlings … at least for the summer months she doesn’t have to watch anyone else’s demon spawn.
In celebration of this event, my wife wanted to do something for the kids at her school. She decided she would set up a grill on campus and cook hot dogs for each and every child on campus. This way she could give all the students a free lunch as a way of saying “have a great summer and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
I know this sounds like a great idea. And, it is … for the kids. For me, it is a bit of a headache. You see, the only thing my wife knows about using a grill is handing me raw meat and telling me to bring it back to her when it’s ready to eat. I have the burn scars to prove that statement. So, for her grand plan of cooking the kids lunch, she needed volunteers to come to her school in the mornings and grill hot dogs.
200-300 hot dogs. Each day for three days.
Why three days? Well, there are almost a thousand kids at the school, and to make sure that everyone was included in the frank-themed festivities they broke the kids into groups by grade level. Fortunately, I did not have go do the grilling all three days. Other parents were foolish enough to volunteer, so I was able to skip the first couple days of Wiener-Mania.
The first day, no one actually did any grilling. The school’s barbeque decided that was a perfect time to stop working. Apparently, even inanimate objects at that school couldn’t wait for the kids to go away. Plan B was to throw 100 hot dogs into the microwave oven, then use the campus art supplies to paint black grill marks on them. The kids didn’t seem to mind. It was still free food, and I have discovered that when it comes to mealtimes, children are like feral dogs. They’ll pretty much eat anything that gets too close to their mouths.
Day two went a bit more smoothly. The school brought in a new barbeque grill that hadn’t yet given up on life and everybody got fed as planned. Day two was also a good day because I didn’t have to be there for that one, either.
Day three was my day.
Cooking hot dogs is no big deal. Even two hundred hot dogs are pretty easy. It just takes time. Where the real problem began is when my wife scheduled me to cook on one of the hottest days of the year. I’m almost certain she didn’t plan it this way, but knowing how much she likes to torment me, I can’t be completely sure. The day I cooked, the outside temperature was pushing a hundred degrees.
Imagine standing around in 100-degree weather for two hours while stationed next to a grill fired up to about 400 degrees. It isn’t a pleasant experience.
Each dog took about eight minutes from the time I placed it on the grill until it got tossed into the aluminum pan to be carted off to the lunchroom. Eight minutes times 200 hotdogs. Lather, rinse, repeat. Although, I think if I just dropped the dogs on the concrete I might have been able to shorten the cooking time by about half. The soles of my feet were certainly well done by the end of the day.
At one point, while I was poking at some franks with the melting pair of tongs in my hand, the devil popped up. He hung around about five minutes, then said, “It’s too hot, bro. I’m outa here.”
At least, I think it was the devil. To be honest, it might have just been a hallucination brought on by heatstroke.
Despite the heat, I managed to get through the day without bursting into flames. I even got a free hotdog for my troubles. Kids got fed, and the school year officially came to a close.
Now that summer has arrived, my wife can take a breath and relax … for about five minutes.
Did I forget to mention Summer School?
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