Believe It or Not

A couple of months ago Chris and I picked up a hot air popcorn popper at the local thrift shop for only $1, which made me very happy since I have fond memories of eating freshly popped popcorn throughout my childhood.

We took home our awesome $1 popper and proceeded to use it that very night. And that’s when we found out that it’s a super powered hot air popper that shoots popcorn and kernels at such amazingly fast speeds that the they ricochet out of the bowl. We ended up with about half of the popcorn on the counter and floor. This is not normal but, hey, we figured it was only $1 so we can deal with a crazy popcorn popper. We’ve used it a few times since.

Yesterday after church, we needed a snack so I pulled the popper and started to make some popcorn. Now, Brendan loves the popper because it’s crazy and shoots popcorn all over the place. He thinks it’s hilarious and even pulls up a chair so he can see what’s going on better. This is what he did yesterday.

And so he was in the perfect spot for a blistering hot unpopped kernel to shoot down into his shirt, which proceeded to burn him quite badly. I could tell by his screaming and crying that it was serious. This is what we saw when we finally got his shirt off of him.

Chris looked up the stats online about popcorn and discovered that popcorn pops at the temperature of 212 degrees but often the unpopped  kernels are hotter. You see, what makes popcorn pop is moisture in the kernel that gets heated up and causes the kernel to burst. But in some kernels the moisture is gone so they never pop. Instead they just get hotter and hotter during the popping process. I think Brendan got one of the extremely hot kernels that didn’t have any moisture in it because his skin blistered up right away – which is a second degree burn.

My poor little boy! I seriously find it hard to believe that a little popcorn kernel did this and I saw it happen. It continued to burn him down his chest and the side of his stomach (where it was trapped in his shirt) although they are not quite as bad as this one.

Luckily he bounced back pretty quickly once we loaded him up with some pain reliever.  He even ate some of the popcorn once he calmed down.