So this story circles around my love of Ramen Noodles which in my family we call “Ram-E-on.” This name for it comes from the fact that my mom’s Korean friends growing up called it RamEon, and so that’s what my mom also called it, so that’s what my whole family grew up calling it.
Anyway! I was raised eating RamEon almost every day I was home for lunch. My siblings would even make fun of me because I ate RamEon so much and that was one of the few things I knew how to make. I'm sure this totally "healthy" and "well balanced" diet of carbs and salt did nothing to contribute to my being only five feet and a half inch tall (shorter than anyone else in my family.)
I ate RamEon so much largely because it's pretty much the easiest thing in the world to make. In fact, sometimes in my family we would just eat the noodles plain without even cooking them, which of course makes it even lazier of a meal. We didn’t do this that often though because it was kinda weird and then we just wasted the flavor packet and it wasn’t really as good.
Usually I’d make my RamEon in the microwave (which since discovering the stove top method I now think the microwave way is… icky). The point is that even with actually cooking it it’s still just about the easiest thing you can make. The steps are: 1. Heat water in a hot water pot, 2. Put hot water and noodles in bowl, 3. Put bowl in microwave for 3 minutes, 4. Dump out some water to make it more delicious, 5. Add flavor packet, 6. EAT.
Since it was so easy, I had been making it myself for years and thought of myself as something of a RomEon expert.
Well during the summer when I was fresh out of third grade something happened.
Dun, Dun, DUN.
Because it was summer my parents were away at work and I was the only one up. It was probably about 10AM but all of my siblings were still in bed or not home for whatever reason. Due to the fact that I strongly dislike breakfast I decided to just have lunch at 10 instead, and of course my lunch of choice was the only thing I knew how to make, RamEon.
I boiled the water, put the noodles in the microwave for 3 minutes and went to preoccupy myself with watching TV or something while I waited. The microwave beeped and I sprung for the food only to notice that black smoke and a horrible smell was coming from the microwave.
Yep! My RamEon was on fire and smoking like crazy. I in a panic about burning my noodles, grabbed the RamEon with my oven mitts and took it out onto my deck. I then dumped water on it which made the concoction smoke more and make a disturbingly loud sizzle noise, which freaked me out even more.
I was in a panic about what to do. I didn’t know how to dispose of the RamEon. I didn’t know if it was safe to have it on the deck, or if my microwave was okay, or how to get rid of the horrible burnt smell.
What I did was go to my oldest sister who was conveniently sleeping on the couch downstairs. I poked her and shook her and yelled at her to WAKE UP and I threw several pillows at her. She woke up enough to ask what was wrong.
I frantically explained, “Jessa! My RamEon caught on fire and I took it outside and poured water on it and it smoked a bunch and I don’t know what to do!!!!”
My sister’s response was a sigh and, “What time is it?”
I impatiently told her the time and with this information she decided it was too early to be bothered to help her little sister and went back to sleep. O.o
Since my 19ish year old sister was totally unhelpful I then went down to my 12ish year old brother’s room in the basement hoping he would prove more useful. I pestered him to wake up explaining the story once again. Thankfully, Josh actually got up and helped me unlike my sister.
He went and took the RamEon and scraped it over the fence into our neighbor’s yard, because since it was filled with ivy, they’d never know. We also sadly, then had to throw the bowl in the trash since it was totally black and ruined. Because it was one of only two bowls we had solely for the purpose of making RamEon it was a heavy loss and everyone was mad at me for it.
Now the problem was resolved and everything was fine, but I never lived down the fact that I failed at making the thing I would make every day and my family still make fun of me for it. My error on that day was forgetting one of the very simple steps in cooking RamEon.
I didn’t add water to my bowl before putting it in the microwave.
I’m pretty certain that I even took the time to boil the water but then just stuck the noodles in the bowl and put it in the microwave without adding the water I had literally just boiled for that very purpose…
Well I guess the takeaways from this experience are that:
1. Even the easiest tasks you do every day can be ruined when you least expect it, but uhh at least you have an interesting story.
2. Sleeping Jessica’s are useless in a crisis so instead ask your brother Josh. If you don’t have a Joshy Boy of your very own then I guess you're stuck chucking the RamEon over your neighbor’s fence by yourself.
Sorry.