Fatal Moment

Never trust a pizza pocket.

   Despite its cheesy cheeriness, despite its crispy contentment, despite its saucy satisfaction, the pizza pocket conceals a hidden motive: destruction.

   And by destruction I am referring to skin cells.

   It was freshman year; I got home from soccer practice to watch the women’s national team in the World Cup. What better thing to accompany me on the couch, I thought, than pizza pockets fresh from the freezer? So I put them in the toaster oven, and I knew consuming those pockets of goodness would change my life, but in an unexpected turn of events, it was for worse, not for better. This snack of both children and lazy teenagers alike would soon betray me in an act so vile, so awful, so painful that I would never trust them again.

   My first mistake was trusting the pizza pockets, yes, but my second mistake was this: being a said lazy teenager, and also being very considerate of my mother, I decided to avoid dirtying a plate and instead use the pan. Of course, being the intelligent teenager that I am, I laid a towel on my lap prior to placing the burning hot pan on my thighs.

   Well, the soccer game got good, and in my final mistake, I leaned forward; in this fatal moment, the pan slipped onto my left knee. My first instinct was to save the falling pizza pockets, but my screaming skin demanded otherwise. I don’t know which hurt worse: losing my snack to the germs on the floor or receiving a second-degree burn from them.

   Again, being the clearly intelligent teenager that I am, my burn treatment happened to be ice. No, not running water like you are supposed to, or even ice wrapped in a towel, but frozen water in direct contact with the burn. When the pain became worse and the color changed to white, a simple Google search informed me that ice is one of the worst things you can do to help a burn.

   I should’ve been mad at my own stupidity or merely blamed it on poor luck, but I gave the credit to the pizza pockets. And, tragically, I’ve never eaten one since.

   This seemingly pointless anecdote has a moral: situations that harm us individually sometimes cause collateral damage to those we care about, and we need to recognize this to sustain healthy relationships. It is so easy to make someone a culprit, to reject responsibility, but this only serves to destroy, not to mend. Luckily, the only thing I lost was pizza pockets; don’t lose something that is actually valuable.