Popping Corn
Several years ago, I ran an event for Northwest Georgia Girl Scouts in Atlanta. I had about 300 girls at Rock Eagle Camp in Eatonton, Georgia, for the weekend. About midnight Saturday night I was in my cabin with two nurses watching the Tonight Show. We were laughing, something about Jane Fonda’s jeans. Then suddenly I gripped my throat and started hitting the women. I couldn’t suck in a breath. I could force air out, sounding like a harmonica, but couldn’t get any in. They thought I was still laughing at first, then they saw the seriousness of it. They Heimliched and Heimliched and started pushing furniture around, I was passing out when I suddenly grabbed a tiny bit of air, then a bit more. It was a very close call. We were a long way away from any medical service.
I had eaten popcorn about an hour and a half earlier. Just a fistful when I went to say goodnight to my own troop. A thin cover from a kernel wedged into the soft tissue in my windpipe, completely covering it. So, I can’t eat popcorn. As enticing as it smells, and all the fun attached to eating it, I just can’t. If that little kernel hadn’t loosened up, I would have died on Mothers’ Day.
But, I don’t hold it against popcorn in general. My husband eats it. He pops it in the microwave and the house smells wonderful. We popped some this week because I wanted to make popcorn strings for our Christmas tree. I strung several strings, but I’m really not happy with it.
First, it’s not white. It’s yellow. Second, it didn’t pop into little puffy balls, like clover leaf meets marshmallow, the way popcorn is supposed to look. Instead the popped kernels all look like tiny dumbbells, thin in the middle with lopsided balls on each end. What is this? Has popcorn changed over these years I’ve not been paying attention? It’s not pretty, Mr. Redenbacher.
While I was stringing it, Dave asked if I remembered when we used to pop corn on the stove. Sure do. My mom had a popper that had a ratchet on the lid like a flour sifter. We had to hold the lid on while turning the ratchet to stir the corn so it wouldn’t stick on the bottom and burn. When Dave and I were young marrieds we used a kettle and shook it back and forth on the stove until it popped, or burnt. Later in our first house, we popped it in the fireplace with a long-handled popper. Once it caught fire in the fireplace!
Remember making popcorn balls? My mom made them in colors by adding a drop of food coloring to the Karo mix. We had red ones, green ones, even blue. Loved the hot sticky fingers. We wrapped them in waxed paper and gave them away at Christmas. We made popcorn ball Christmas trees with the Girl Scouts and sold them at bazaars. We popped corn for May baskets, too.
Cold wintry nights like this one, with the wind howling, and frozen rain rattling the windows, makes me wish I could eat popcorn. This is a perfect popcorn night. But I’ll just smell it.