Microwaving popcorn instead of politics

Did you know that today is National Popcorn Day? Apparently the National Popcorn Board cooked it up. What? You didn’t know there was a National Popcorn Board? I didn’t know either until I was looking for a subject for today’s column. I am determined to avoid all things political. That isn’t so easy to do this week. My mission is to discover what I can find about the National Popcorn Board and ignore the rabble rousers as best as I can.

The first site I went to said that in addition to today being National Popcorn Day, National Popcorn Poppin’ Month isn’t until October. It seems that the National Popcorn Board cooked up that holiday also. Maybe they forgot they already had a day named in honor of the treat.

In leafing through assorted articles there was a question someone asked about how to tell when to harvest it. I planted popcorn in my garden one year. Harvest time was obvious. I can state with absolute certainty that it should be harvested the day before marauding raccoons trample the stalks and take at least one bite out of each ear of corn. Those of you who grow the crop for a living have more reliable ways of timing the harvest and controlling critters. I haven’t planted popcorn since then no matter how much the raccoons beg.

The Popcorn Board resides in Chicago and consists of various popcorn companies. Way back in 1999, the Secretary of Agriculture himself proclaimed October was the month to celebrate all things popcorn. So far I haven’t found out if October was jealous of January or if each month wanted its own celebration.

I have found statistics that say that Americans consume 15 billion quarts of popcorn per year. That is a lot of popcorn. It works out to be around 45 quarts for each of us. Plus, somebody has to take my share. I rarely eat it. Maybe I should share it with the raccoons.

The only time I really like popcorn is at the movie theater. Even before the virus shuttered most, if not all, theaters, I usually went to the show once or maybe twice a decade.

Several lifetimes ago, when I was pregnant with my one and only child, my first husband and I would go to the Dayton mall and walk around. People watching has always been a cheap form of entertainment. At one end of the mall was a Sears store. Just past that was a shop that featured caramel corn. The smell turned my stomach every time we passed the store. Worse yet, my then-husband insisted on buying a bag of the sticky snack every time. Did I mention that the aroma made me nauseous? Oddly enough, Cracker Jacks didn’t elicit the same response, probably because their aroma wasn’t as strong.

Perhaps the most interesting bit of trivia that I found while searching for popcorn information was that, “In 1948, small heads of Zea mays everta (popcorn) were discovered by Herbert Dick and Earle Smith in the Bat Cave of west central New Mexico. Ranging from smaller than a penny to about two inches, the oldest Bat Cave ears were about 4,000 years old. Several individually popped kernels were also discovered, which have since been carbon dated and shown to be approximately 5,600 years old. There’s also evidence of early use of popcorn in Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, as well as other places in Central and South America.” There was no mention of Robin, Cat Woman, the Joker or any of the other characters in the traditional Batman stories. It is enough to know that the bat cave is real.

Popcorn seems to be one of those things that most people like. Besides, even if you don’t eat it, you can always string it into a necklace. Or you can leave it on the floor for some future archeologist to discover.