The Chillzanne®

Had I been able to read the name of the product on the back of the platter, this story would have had a completely different ending. But alas, my dimly lit kitchen and my internal quest to come up with creative solutions to everyday situations turned into the demise of this fine dish.

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So August 18th was my birthday and my friends at Barkley brought me some awesome birthday treats. One of my favorites was the "Monster Slim Jim". I used to eat those by the boxes. Note to "Into the Wild" self guy, next time bring Slim Jims.

Another one of my favorites was a giant platter of white cake, chocolate frosted cupcakes with candy sprinkles. At the end of the treat day, I brought said tray/platter home to my girls to enjoy.

As I was getting ready for work the next day, I washed out the tray to take back to Celeste, the "Cupcake Maker Extraordinaire". They were really good. I wanted it to be as perfectly clean as they were perfectly tasty. So I washed and scrubbed (with soap) and sprayed water into the seams to make sure all was sanitized. As I dried it out, I noticed the platter started sloshing around. I thought to myself, "Crap, I got water into the platter." But I also thought, "Well, maybe the water is supposed to be in the platter for some reason." As I pondered why in the world a platter would need water in it, I could only come up with two things. 1. The platter needed the water to spin better. (Nope, spinning doesn't require water.) 2. The water was there for the tray to be frozen. (Nope. Who the hell freezes a cupcake tray). So then I thought, "Well, I guess I can just return the tray with the water and hope that it's supposed to be that way. BUT, if it's not supposed to be there, then I'm a big goober and Celeste's tray is gonna get all stinky." Hmmm.

So like any anybody else would, I went to my garage and grabbed my cordless drill and the smallest drill bit I had so I could drain the water out of the platter. That way, no stinky water and Celeste would be happy that I fixed it for her. Brilliant.

And just as I planned, I drilled the hole and white murky water poured out the platter and no more sloshing. That's when I scratched my head a little. "Hmmm, I wonder why the water is so dirty. Must have turned white from the white plastic." So all was good. I dried it off and took it to work and the deed was complete.

Later that day I saw Celeste at the Barkley Olympics Triathalon. "Hey! Did you see I left the cupcake platter for you?" I asked. Celeste hadn't seen it but at least she knew it was back. Then I paused a little to watch the flipper, snorkle, baby pool event.

"So, by the way, is that platter supposed to have water in it?" I asked.

Celeste lit up with a resounding, "Why yes. It's a very cool platter. You put it in the freezer and the liquid freezes so you can keep vegatables and dip cold for a party."

I said, "Well it's not a very COOL platter anymore because I drilled a hole in it because I thought I got water in it when I cleaned it out."

She was a good sport and thought it was very funny. We laughed at the fact that the name "Chillzannne" didn't tip me off to the functionality of this high tech tray.

If you read it as "Chilzanny", it doesn't seem so obvious. And the fact that it didn't have instructions on the bottom to tell you how to freeze the tray was a bit of a miss as well.

Stupid platter.

So everyone thinks its a funny story. Everyone laughs at my genious attempt to look at a perfectly good invention and reverse engineer it into a normal platter. But that's how my brain works. Always coming from a different angle. I guess sometimes when you do that you come up with a new way of looking at things. Other times you end up looking at the old way of doing things.

When I told Lisa the story, I thought she would laugh at my goofball maneuver. But instead she said the most profound thing I've ever heard. "You can't drill holes in peoples platters!"

I guess I know that now.