So… a few New Year’s ago, my girlfriend and I decided to order in some food from our favorite Chinese place, China King.  I’m pretty sure Chinese take-out places have a large dartboard with words like “Dragon, King, China, Garden, Happy, Zen, etc” on it, and when they decide to name the place, they throw two darts, and their work is done.  At any rate, their stuff is always decent, and they’re always super-fast.  For some strange reason, every time we get a delivery from there, they feel the need to throw in something for free.  Sometimes it’s free food, or a bottle of soda (never a kind that we like), or even a bamboo calendar.  This should really make me much more nervous than it does… like they’re apologizing for something.  So, my girlfriend calls up and places our order.  Twenty minutes goes by… then thirty,  then 45 minutes.  Keep in mind, it’s usually there within twenty… so this is ODD.  My girlfriend suggests that maybe the delivery person got lost, and so I peek out the window.  Sure enough, there is an elderly Chinese man sitting in his car outside my house, looking very confused.  I open up the front door, and wave to him, and he excitedly gets out of his car, and walks up my sidewalk.  I take the bags from him, we do the money exchange, and I place the bags on the kitchen table.  This is the second time I’ve ever had the “pupu [tee-hee] platter”… but it seems very different from the last time I got it.  We start to munch on that while we open the rest of the containers.  “Hrm,” I think.  “I don’t remember ordering sweet and sour chicken.”  My girlfriend opens hers up and it’s some sort of beef dish.  She does not eat beef.  (My girlfriend is feral, and was raised by cows… don’t you dare judge her or our love!)  She grabs the menu out of the bag, and calls the place back up.  She explains the situation, and after awhile, I hear her arguing.  “No… this is not what we ordered!”  She grabs the menu that we circled everything on, and reads the numbers off.  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, this is what we ordered an hour ago!”  My girlfriend is visibly angry now.  Apparently, the woman on the other end of the phone is also getting heated.  “I spoke to your husband, and this is what he ordered,” the woman said.  (I am refraining for writing this as it was actually spoken, because the phrase in the written word seems awfully racist.  Use your best Racist Chinese Joke voice when reading her parts in your head).  “You did not speak with my husband [‘bitch’ was certainly implied, if not said], you spoke to me, and I ordered the number 5, the number 18, and the number 24!”.  This goes on for awhile, until I emerge from the kitchen with a desperate look on my face.  Waving frantically to get my girlfriend’s attention, she finally mouths “WHAT?!?!”, to which I respond to by holding up the menu from the bag.  Then, I hold up the menu we used to order from.  China King and Happy Garden’s menus look similar, except for the contents, name, and phone number.  It turns out that our neighbors ordered food from a different place (Happy Garden) at the same time.  Our place has better food… just don’t order from them on New Year’s Eve.  They show up an hour later than usual.

So, it’s already been well established that I’m a complete and total idiot.  That said, not every incident where I burn myself is 100% MY fault.  I mean… why the FUCK does coffee need to be so god damned hot?  Seriously… molten lava is a lower temperature than your local Dunkin’ Donuts coffee pot!  I’m fairly certain that humans learned how to make glass when someone accidentally poured out their coffee in the desert.  Now granted, coffee is only hot for so long, and this is what truly amazes me.  I will first drink the coffee, annihilating all of the taste buds and feeling in the tip of my tongue.  10 minutes later, the steam from this coffee will still set fire to my nosehairs and tan my skin.  It is hot like the surface of the sun is hot.  30 seconds after that, it’s drinkable for roughly 10 seconds, after which time it becomes iced coffee.  I put the cup in the microwave to heat it up, and repeat the process until I am in the burn ward.
Speaking of steam, I think most people understand that steam is cooked food’s way of saying “hey… you might want to wait a few seconds”.  For some reason, my brain interprets this as “put that in your mouth”.  After my mouth realizes I have made yet another bad decision, my brain suggests relief.  “Swallow it, quickly!  DO IT!”  My brain is a prick sometimes.  I can feel my intestines cook as the food goes down.  Growing up, I would have the food already in my mouth when my mother would warn me, “Careful… that’s hot”.  I would stare at her, with tears welling up in my eyes.  “Yes… you are yet again 10 seconds too late,” my eyes would say.  “Please help me.”  This role is now my girlfriend’s, and she is also always 10 seconds too late.  Once, she did manage to warn me well in advance.  I looked at her like she thought I was a complete idiot.  I put the food in my mouth and immediately tried to cool it with the “reverse cooling breath” that never seems to do anything but entertain those around me.  I always walk away with a little tiny piece of skin hanging down off the roof of my mouth as a little reminder that patience is a virtue… and I am an idiot that can’t wait 30 seconds for his food to cool.  Pizza has become my favorite food to eat with other people, though… no one can escape pizza’s molten wrath.  It tricks you because the CRUST is nice and cool, and that’s the part you touch.  Cheese starts to melt at around 172 degrees Fahrenheit.  The place we order it from cooks their pizza just below the temperature where cheese turns into steam.  Ever bought a pizza and had cheese all over the top of the box.  Cheese steam.  My friend grabs a slice and puts it in his mouth.  “Careful,” I say.  “That’s hot!”