Dear reader, I know it’s impossible, but I can’t help but dream of it. If I could do one thing with this world, just one amazing thing, it would be this…
Well, first off, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this thing, but since its discovery in 1953, the ‘sun’ has played an important role in life on earth. And I have a sneaking suspicion I can use this ‘sun’ for more than something to stare at. You know how you can fry an egg on the sidewalk when it gets really hot, or how you can dry tomatoes, or make raisins in this ‘sun?’
To this day, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a way to make a sun baked potato. I have to use my oven, or, to cut down on my electric bill, my neighbor’s oven. I tried wrapping a potato in tin foil and leaving it on the sidewalk, but when I came back to check on it, all I had was a frozen potato. Then I decided to try my experiments in the summer instead of the winter.
I waited until the weather warmed up, and guess what? My neighbor, Maya, saw it, thought, “Hey, free potato” and took it home and baked it in her oven like a chump. That potato was on the sidewalk for a reason, Maya, and no, giving me another potato won’t bring back the time I lost on my scientific experiments!
Maya got all offended. I explained to her I was doing science, and she wouldn’t understand. I was designing a system that could bake a potato in the sun. But then her eyes lit up, and she offered to help me. “I could help you design and build something to do that.” She said brightly.
I appreciated her offer, but Maya doesn’t understand science the way I do. But she’s like that. Sometimes, she acts like she’s so smart because of her PhD in “solar engineering”, whatever that is.
Anyway, back to potatoes and genuine science. I tried wrapping a potato in foil in a large metal bowl to reflect the sun’s rays. But even that didn’t do the trick. All I wound up with was a very warm potato. And is a warm potato a baked potato? Nay, my friend, it is not.
I thought about launching a potato towards the sun, so it would get closer to the heat source. I tried it, first attaching a long string to retrieve it after it baked. It didn’t work. But my many attempts gained the attention of our local news. You may have seen the headline “Man throws potatoes into the air before crying.”
Although my dream of a truly perfect sun baked potato went unfulfilled , I did not give up. And that, of course, is how I met a magic pixie.
I thought maybe I needed to go somewhere really hot, instead of my local town in Nerbly County, where it only gets toasty. To do that, I had to get closer to the equator. (That’s the part of the Earth that touches the Sun.)
So I drove all the way down to Freeble County, twenty minutes south. On my drive, a bright sparkling light kept showing up in the rear-view mirror. It was like when sunlight reflects off something and catches the corner of your eye. Or when you hold your watch a certain way to reflect sunlight in someone’s eyes, and they get mad because you’re distracting them from doing CPR.
The problem was, this flickering little light kept going and going. Almost as if it was chasing after me. To test my theory, I slowed down and sped up, and sure enough, it followed behind. When I finally got to the Freeble County line, I pulled off the road.
I got out and saw that the flickering light was a tiny little pixie! She was very small and wore a tiny green dress. Her translucent bluish wings on her back looked like a butterfly wings. She had large blue eyes and bright red hair in a short haircut, not really a bowl haircut, but shorter on the back and sides, and longer on the top. That’s the style of haircut it was, but it doesn’t have a name.
I said ‘hi’, but she didn’t answer back. She was breathing hard, bent down with her right hand on her little pixie knee and her left hand held up her little pixie index finger for me to wait. After a moment, she caught her breath and said, “Hey! I’ve been following you this whole time. Why didn’t you stop?”
I was too stunned to answer. She went on. “You passed by Pixie Cottage on the Day of Wish Giving, something that happens around every 500 years. On the Day of Wish Giving, we randomly select one human and grant them one special wish. It can be anything they want. Also, we don’t trick you or attach strings, like those jerk wad genies.”
“You give wishes like genies?” I asked.
“No! Not like genies! What did I just say? No strings attached. The last wish day was around 500 years ago. We gave one big wish to a gentleman named Leonardo da Vinci. He was a very bright fellow. Say, is Mr. da Vinci still around?”
“I don’t know. But I can ask.” I said.
“If so, tell him the pixies say hi.”
“You said you randomly select one human. Why was I chosen?”
“This time, we chose whichever human happened to drive by Pixie Cottage first. And that was you. “
“Wow! I wish for unlimited-”
“No!” she barked. She then took a deep breath and smoothed her little pixie dress, then said, “It takes all of our pixie energy to grant the big wish, so it can only be one. What is your wish? It can be anything. End a war? Stop a disease? Anything.”
This was my opportunity, and I would not let it pass. “I want to use the sun to bake a potato,” I proudly declared. There was a long pause while Janet took this in. Oh yeah, the pixie’s name was Janet.
Finally, she asked, “You want a solar oven?”
It was hard not to laugh at such a stupid question, so I laughed at her. I spoke slowly so she might understand. “No. I want something that uses the – sun” when I said ‘sun’ I pointed to the sky, because clearly Janet wasn’t getting it. “To use the – sun – to bake a potato… po-ta-to” I showed her a potato from my backpack. (I always carry a potato filled backpack.)
Janet raised one little pixie eyebrow.“That’s your wish? Your one wish for humanity?”
“Yup” I said.
“You’re sure? No taksies backsies.”
“Yes!” I said with determination and vigor.
“Okay.” She sighed loudly, took out her little pixie phone, and typed for a minute while mumbling “not wasting pixie magic on this fool” and “Prime shipping.” Finally she finished her magic spell and said, “done. You’ll get it by Friday.”
And on Friday, I became the inventor and owner of what I named the first “solar oven” ever, I assume. It was amazing!
But then I remembered one thing Janet the pixie asked me before she left. “If that’s what you wanted, naturally made baked potatoes, why didn’t you ask for me to create potatoes that grow pre-baked?”
I stood there, stunned. And dear reader, I know it’s impossible, but I can’t help but dream of it. If I could do one thing with this world, just one amazing thing, it would be this. To this day, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a way to grow a pre-baked potato. If I perhaps started with planting partially baked potatoes, and let them…