There’s going to be a few of these.

Pepsi is worthless. And there was nothing to do at Travis’s mom’s house after midnight or so. So we decided to fill some latex gloves with Pepsi and pop them in the microwave, just to see what would occur. We assumed that it would be nothing good, but we weren’t quite sure HOW not good. We also wanted to see if one could survive. They had just gotten a digital satellite dish, so we would fill the three-minute or so long gaps while the mixture was being heated by watching Tron. The first experiment failed to survive. We heard a loud “pop” after about two minutes of microwaving. We promptly removed the dead test item and wiped down the interior of the experimental chamber, and added a second gloves. Was it changed at all from the first? No, where would be the fun in that? This one survived the full three-minute test, and I had just long enough after the microwave had beeped to comment on how this one had survived…when it exploded. It lived a full two seconds or so after the ending of its torture. The third glove was again identical. It also survived the three-minute radioactive bombardment. And then the microwave beeped, and, in the living room, we waited for the bang that would accompany the latex giving way. It didn’t come. Travis and I entered the kitchen, and approached the appliance of doom. Through the window we could see that the glove had expanded to, essentially, fill the entire unit. Travis pushed the door open button, and as soon as it did…the glove exploded. Rather warm pepsi poured forth, but missed both of us. That glove had NOTHING on the great Pepsi bottle explosion that had essentially changed the colour of the kitchen in this same house a few months earlier, one that I will probably have to cover in another feature. Fearless in our boredom, we plowed ahead with a new prototype. This one would contain pretzels as well as Pepsi, mushed up into a sort of carbonated mash. Into the microwave this fourth glove went. And this glove survived so long, it was actually removed from the microwave at the end of the process successfully! We were amazed! We played with it a bit, and then we went into Travis’s room. I was on his bed, and, suddenly, he through the glove at me. I successfully caught the latex portion…which exploded….spraying pepsi pretzel mush all over my shirt. That shirt stayed behind at Travis’s until it could be washed.

Those latex gloves were so useful. We had fights with water-filled ones that produced giant fingers.