Fun Size Bytes (from @Tj)

Thanksgiving Story for Tony_D

That reminds me of a story…

We were in grad school, a bunch of us young married types. It was Thanksgiving but none of us were going anywhere, with the exception of one couple.

One of the other couples decided we ought to do a big-ass Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings, including a giant-ass turkey, stuffing, pies, etc.

Our apartments were all astoundingly small (The Wife and I literally had the smallest one, I think I’ve mentioned before that it is now a storage closet for maintenance. We lived there for the first 2 years of our marriage) and the kitchens were way too small to do this. But we each agreed to do a different part of the meal in our apartments and bring them together.

The friends who were going to be gone left us their key and offered that we could use their kitchen/stove too.

So we decided to do the turkey in their apartment, since it would need to cook for hours and would heat the place up, but at least no one would have to be in there sweating (utilities were included in our rent, so we weren’t sticking them with a big bill).

Somehow, and I am still not sure how, they pulled it off. It was a delicious meal, a great time, etc. The only downside was about 20 minutes after we started eating, the fire alarm went off. This was odd since the building was mostly empty except for us. We checked the hall, no signs of smoke. The apartment we had used to cook the turkey was next door, so we knew it wasn’t from there.

Since we were still eating, and had taken all day to cook it, we decided that we’d ignore the alarm. They occasionally went off anyway, so it wasn’t all that unusual.

Of course that’s not quite the end of the story.

My memory of how we found out what had happened is a little sketchy, but eventually someone came and banged on the door to ask us if we knew who had the apartment next door. We told them they were gone for the holiday.

“Well they’ve got a leak in their apartment, and it’s soaked through the floor and into the sprinkler system, which created a short, which is what set off the alarm.”

Our hostess jumped out of her seat, grabbed the key, and headed next door.

Apparently when whoever-took-the-turkey-out-of-the-oven did so, they put it on a plate and brought it over to where we were eating.

But before they left, they had put the pan—which was caked with droppings, etc from the hours the turkey cooked—into the sink and started running water over it to loosen the “stuff” off the pan.

And then forgot about it.

Eventually the stuff came off the pan, but clogged the drain to the sink, at which point the sink began to fill, and spilled over the edge of the counter, and onto the floor, and through the floor.

I never actually saw the damage firsthand, but IIRC there was about 2” of water about 8’ out from their sink/kitchen.

It was a really good meal, though…