Amy Beth Hale posted on Facebook this morning about getting a new microwave oven. She had put off doing so for about a year and a half after the old one went out, and did so mostly because the light over the stove died with the old microwave.

It brought back a memory of a microwave that wasn’t so benign in its passing. It is a second hand story, so i will attempt to keep it anonymous for i cannot vouch for the veracity. But it’s a good story.

Out west in a hilly region of the countryside, there is a wonderful golf course: tough, up and down among many pines with narrow fairways and small greens, and a small lake. Homes are built around the beautiful private course and many of the residents are club members.

Several of these members played a couple of rounds each week with each other with small wagers. One such wager was at the fourteenth tee at the back of the lake. The group had a standing bet they would all pay a hundred bucks if someone could hit a ball off the tee about sixty degrees right of the fairway line and reach the other side of the lake, about 290 yards away. Each time, they reached the fourteenth tee, they would take turns before their tee shots for the match to try and hit the other side of the lake.

One member whose home was behind the fourteenth tee was often close but still short of his goal. He knew the harder the golf ball, the further it would go. So he devised his plan of winning the standing bet. As they walked from the thirteenth green to the next tee box, he said he had to run inside his house and get something out of the kitchen. When he got inside, he placed his golf ball in his kitchen microwave and turned it on high, figuring microwaving it for a minute or so would make the ball hard enough to go longer and get his shot to other side of the lake.

He turned on the microwave.

The other golfers heard the blast.

The microwave exploded and ruined a good portion of the kitchen.

The golfer/house owner never found the golf ball. His future tee shots never reached the other side of the lake.

i’m not sure why, but i laugh every time i think of that story.

Thanks, Amy Beth.