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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my favorite Sonic food item is the bacon cheeseburger, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a Christmas story about a boy scout event and a cup of hot chocolate.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
For most of us, the Christmas season just isn’t the same without a Christmas tree. Growing up, we always had a real Christmas tree. When we moved out to a small rural town, dad would channel his inner Clark Griswold and go cut one down himself. The smell of the real tree was nice, but I never liked the way the needles would shed all over the carpet. Therefore, I’ve always had a fake tree. When I lived in the dorm at college, I bought a small one-foot tall tree and bought some decorations that were the perfect size for it. I stored it away each year in a shoe box. I still have it, in fact.
Today’s story will take us back to 1983 or 1984. My parents were still married and we lived in a trailer house located in between the town I now live in, Edmond, OK, and the town north of here, Guthrie, OK. My brother was part of the local Boy Scouts group, and that group is the source of this story.
My brother’s troop was responsible for a Christmas tree lot here in Edmond. I’m guessing it was some sort of fundraiser for them, but I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that on a cold December night my family and I found ourselves manning the lot and trying to sell evergreens.
We never had a lot of money growing up, and my brother and I understood that. We almost never ate out, my mom sewed up holes in our clothes and would let hems in and out as we bought new clothes and grew. I don’t ever recall being bothered by that; it was just our way of life. So it’s probably no surprise that we almost never ate out either. That was a treat that we just couldn’t afford.
I don’t recall a lot of the events of that night at the tree lot. In fact, the whole evening might have easily been forgotten if not for an unexpected turn of events.
At some point in the evening I got bored. In fact, I’m pretty sure that boredom set in about 10 minutes after we got there. After boredom set in, the cold began to bite at me. I was miserable.
Fortunately, we had not been left completely out in the cold. Someone had set up a tent that was closed on three sides that helped block the cold winter wind. Inside the tent was a gas space heater. While it wasn’t enough to fight back all of the cold, it was certainly better than the environment outside of the tent.
Warmer? Yes. But still I was cold. And still I was bored.
Just a stones throw away from the christmas tree lot was a Sonic drive-in. Sonic is a company that started here in Oklahoma and going there has always been a treat. The lights of Sonic began a siren’s song that only I seemed to be able to hear, and I began asking my parents if they would let me go there to get some hot chocolate and food. Of course, my parent’s told me, “no.”
I kept at them until they finally relented. They gave a few dollars and allowed my brother and I to walk over to Sonic and get some goodies.
My night suddenly got better! My brother and I quickly made our way over to Sonic and placed our order. We then made our way back over to the tent so we could begin ingesting our very special treats. I soon discovered a problem. I couldn’t eat and hold my drink at the same time so I began looking for a convenient place to put my drink.
I thought about putting my drink on the ground, but then I spotted the perfect location. There in the middle of the tent was an item that was the perfect height to use as a coaster: the space heater!
I approached the heater and promptly put my drink on top of it. Now, as you probably know, Sonic uses styrofoam cups for their drinks. Guess what happened next? Yup, the cup melted. My drink began spilling out of the shriveling sides of the container and running out onto the metal surface of the space heater. As the liquid made contact with the metal, it instantly boiled away into a chocolate tinged steam cloud.
I was shocked. It took less than 5 seconds for my cup of goodness to become my cup of sadness. I stood there in a moment of shock and then began crying. My parents looked over at me with looks of anger. Why did I sit a styrofoam cup down on a hot metal surface? Well, I had no idea that styrofoam would melt like that. I mean, I was only 7 or 8 at the time, was I really supposed to know the melting point of styrofoam?
I begged my parents to let me go back to Sonic and get a new drink, but they refused. I knew that I had been given a rare treat and had blown it. I knew there was no way to replace the hot chocolate. That didn’t take the sting away.
Here’s what I learned.
This is one of those stories that’s mostly comical, but I did learn something from it. I learned that styrofoam and heat do not play nicely together. I never had to relearn that lesson. You could even say it was burned into my memory that day.
But I think I also learned a lesson that day about the value of things. I learned that some things can’t be replaced. There are a lot of factors that determine if something can be replaced, and for us, on that day, a hot chocolate could not be replaced.
I’m glad my parents didn’t replace the hot chocolate. I had to sit there there the rest of the night and suffer the consequences of my actions. Did I intend to waste the hot chocolate? No. Was I careless with the hot chocolate? Not really. I mean, I was goofing off or trying to be wasteful. I set it down very carefully on a spot that I thought would be best.
Unfortunately, the spot I selected turned out to be the worst possible location I could have chosen. I never made that mistake again and it taught me that there are sometimes tough consequences to deal with even for unintended mistakes.
Looking back on it now, it wasn’t all bad. It was pretty cool to see the drink melt and boil away into nothing. That give me an idea…I think I have a space heater around here somewhere…
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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