This is a story that is set back in the mid ’80s. I was working for GTE California at the time, and was on a business trip in Tampa, FL. I don’t recall the particular purpose, but I do remember travelling there with a coworker named Frank.

First off, the weather in Florida was not what we both were used to at our homes in California. In California, the weather is often relatively unchanged over months of time. In Florida, you can go from a nice sunny day, to a rainstorm of Armageddon proportions, and back to a sunny day, all in the duration of a typical commute. We had such a commute on our first day from the hotel to the office. Upon arrival we walked from the car to the door under gorgeous sunshine, and through dense steam coming from the water left on the ground by a storm ten minutes ago in which we both thought we were going to die.

One important point here is that Frank remains a good friend and is one of the wittiest people I know. Inside the door, we met our coworker Bob who worked in that office. Meeting him for the first time face-to-face, we recalled our nightmarish experience getting to the office.

Bob said, “Ya know . . . Right now we are actually in a drought.”

“Really?” Frank replied. “In California, when we have drought . . . It don’t rain.”

At the end of the day, on our way back to the hotel, it started raining again. Really, really hard. Frank was driving, with the wipers flipping back and forth at the highest speed, with his nose to the windshield in a desperate attempt to see where he was going.

“Wow,” he said. “This drought is really getting bad.”

That evening, in what I suppose was a normal Florida rainstorm, it sounded like the hotel was under mortar attack. I swear to God at least one lightening bolt had hit the windowsill. The room telephone rang. It was Frank telling me he was scared and was thinking about building a fort of sofa cushions in the middle of the room to offer some sense of security. I suggested we hang up the phones so as to not be electrocuted.

I don’t recall the circumstances, but some sort of work demands had us staying in town another week. The issue for me at the time was that I had only packed a week’s worth of clothing. I could re-wear most of what I had with the obvious exception of underwear and socks. For whatever reason, the hotel I was in had a self service laundry room with a single washer and a dryer. Being my usual independent self, I decided to do my own laundry. Unfortunately, after washing all of my underwear and socks, I found the dryer to be broken. Now… A normal person would have gone to the hotel management with this issue. And now that I think about it, a normal person would have employed the hotel laundry service to begin with, but I digress.

I returned to my hotel room with a pile of wet laundry and no dryer. To most people, this would be a problem. To an engineer like myself, it was a challenge. Using the clothes hangers in the closet, and most of the appendages in the room that would accommodate them, I began to hang the clothing around areas of the room to dry.

A few hours into this exercise revealed both no progress in the drying of the clothing as well as the realization that I was in Florida. Basically, the clothing was never going to dry.

As customary on business trips, I made my daily call home to The Admiral. After describing my predicament, she recalled a travel hack in which women would wash panty hose in the bathroom sink then dry them in a microwave oven.

“Do you have a microwave oven in the room?” she asked.

“I do,” I replied.

“You should give it a shot,” she said.

What an awesome idea, I thought. As a test, I started with a pair of socks. I put them in the microwave, then powered it on for a few seconds. Checking the socks, I found them to be warm. Progress. I closed the door and powered it on for another 20 seconds or so. I opened the door and found the socks to be steaming. Vaporized water was evidence the socks were definitely getting dry. Giving them another 30 seconds or so, I removed the socks which were hot and dry. Success.

I then began to retrieve the remainder of the clothing from the room, and tossed them all into the microwave, estimating the cooking time for this “full load” to be three minutes. I turned the oven on, and grabbed a newspaper, fully confident I would shortly have fully dry clothing.

The smell was the first indicator. A burnt rubber sort of smell took my attention from the newspaper and directed it to the oven. It was then that I saw the small streamers of smoke emitting from the microwave, which became a respectable plume as I opened the door.

The underwear and socks were unquestionably dry. Dry as a bone. Also, this exercise revealed that when you leave laundry in a microwave at too long of a duration, the elastic waistbands seem to burn first. I’m just offering that up so that readers may jot it down, learning something at my expense. You are all welcome.

The next morning, I awoke and began preparing for the work day. I had put on a pair of scorched underwear, was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, and noting that I looked like a pants-less survivor of a plane crash.

Soon later, Frank and I were on our way to the office on a nice sunny morning. While driving the rental car, he looked over to me as I was itching around my waist area.

“What’s up?” he asked. “You got bugs or something?”

“No. I just scorched my underwear last night in the microwave.”

Not saying anything, he casually pulled the car to the curb, shifted into park and asked, “What?”

I told him the entire story, and he got a really good laugh out of it. And good friends don’t let things go.

Years later, Frank and I were visiting some office in some other state. We were walking by a cafeteria and Frank noted a bank of microwave ovens.

“Hey…. Look! This place has it’s own laundromat. “

It was not the first reference and it was definitely not the last.

Back to the salad