Hick Needs Constant Supervision in the Kitchen

You can't kid a kidder, you can't cheat a cheater, and you can't fool a teacher. Seriously. Hick should know by now. The more details he puts into his "explanations," the easier it is to detect his untruths.

Hick was planning to play bingo on Wednesday evening. He came home early. Said he'd fix himself a meal of our grilled holiday leftovers around 3:30, and leave at 4:00. I was just getting ready to shower when he came in from mowing at 3:00.

"I guess you can find everything for yourself."

"Yeah. I'm getting ready to warm my food here in a minute."

"Okay. I'm getting in the shower. I should be out before you leave."

It was about 3:10 when I left the living room. And 3:50 when I came back. 

"Mmm. I smell baked beans!"

"Yeah. Them was good."

"What's that noise? What's running in the kitchen?"

"The microwave."

"What's in it? I thought you were done eating."

"Nothing."

"NOTHING! You can't run a microwave with nothing in it! It's not good for them! Why would you do that?"

"I got it on the wrong time. There's no OFF button! I couldn't make it stop!"

"How long has it been running???"

"Just a couple minutes."

"What did you set it on?"

"Seven minutes. I meant to put my food for 1:30, but I hit the 7 somehow. And then I wanted to add 30 seconds after it, but I hit 45."

"The microwave has been running for 45 minutes???"

"No, Val. Only a couple minutes. I took my food out after 1:30 went by. And I couldn't stop it."

"It stops when you open the door."

"But it runs when you close it. I couldn't get the time off."

"How in the world did you hit 7 thinking it was 3? And then 4 and 5, thinking it was 3 and 0?"

"I don't know, Val! I didn't have my glasses on!"

"Why didn't you just hit the red button?"

"There's a red button?"

"I'm looking at it right now. There. It's off. How hard was THAT?"

"I didn't see no red button."

"Do you only see color with your glasses? I think you left it running for 45 minutes, hoping it would be done before I came out!"

"No. It just turned back on when I ate."

"You've been done for a while, it seems. I don't see a plate."

"I just threw away my plate before you came out. And that's when I turned it back on to finish the couple of minutes."

"It's REALLY hot! And if it was off while you ate, why would you turn it back on when you threw away your plate?"

"I don't know Val! It was only on a couple of minutes, because I couldn't stop it."

When I got home from town, I took a picture of the microwave for evidence. I can't explain the warpy ghostly door frames and wallpaper border. It's just a trick from the glassy surface of the microwave keypad. I took two pics, and they both came out like that.

Clearly, there IS a RED button that says STOP. I suppose Hick wanted it to say OFF. And look at the placement of those numbers. Not sure how he thinks they were arranged. Looks pretty standard to me. All I did to stop that microwave from running was open the door, hit STOP, and the clock went back to normal. Even if Hick had just hit STOP while it was running, it would have stopped. Maybe leaving the remaining time on there. But it would not have been running.

Something is not right with this story...