If you found out you were losing your mind and it happened at 1:00 am in the morning. Would you call anybody? Or would you be more worried about waking someone up at that hour?
This is the decision I had to make a few nights ago when I decided to research Air Fryers.
First, a little backstory.
I wanted to make an Indian recipe called Besan Chilla. However, I wanted to make it without oil. I also wanted to make a couple of other flat bread recipes that you fry instead of baking.
Close to midnight, Air Fryers came to mind.
I thought, “That’s it! If I want to fry my flatbread without using oil, I’ll just get an Air Fryer.”
So, I went online to do Air Fryer research.
Air Fryers have been around for years but I’m a bit late to the party and have not been paying attention to them. This is a little embarrassing to admit but I was googling things like, “What does an Air Fryer do?” I also watched several YouTube Air Fryer videos.
After the YouTube videos, I took a break, then went back online to check how much Air Fryers cost. Right before I did this, I remembered something about all the videos I had watched.
In the videos I watched, people were making recipes that you would normally make in an oven.
They weren’t really making recipes that you would normally make in a frying pan.
I wondered, “If you’re using the Air Fryer to make things that you were going to make in an oven anyway, what’s the point?” It seems that an Air Fryer should replace things you would make in a frying pan or a deep fryer. I brushed these thoughts aside and got ready to do some comparison shopping.
But right before I started searching, that inner voice that had remained quiet up until then, buried deep within me said, “Carol, what’s the difference between an Air Fryer and an oven?”
By now it was around 1:00 a.m. I don’t know if it was because it was late and I was tired but all of a sudden, my apartment seemed to start spinning. A feeling of wobbliness ensued as I contemplated the possibility that millions of people were buying a small oven and calling it an Air Fryer. Even worse, millions of people were doing this and I was the only one on earth that knew it was an oven.
This wobbly feeling immediately led me into a flashback sequence.
One by one, memories of the videos I had watched started coming back to me.
- In the instructional video, the guy did say avoid putting anything doughy or with batter in the Air Fryer.
- In another video the host put the finished mixture into a thing which looked very much like an oven.
- In the last video, the presenter was making pancakes and greased the bottom of the Air Fryer first before putting in the batter.
This was the moment in the wee hours of the morning when I started worrying about myself.
But to be fair, is googling after midnight ever a good idea? I should not have started this kind of research at that hour. There are only two things a human being should ever google after midnight.
They are:
1) Driving directions to the nearest hospital.
2) Driving directions to the Powerball prize pick up office.
I tried to snap out of it but couldn’t help thinking, “This isn’t possible!” I started to check if other people knew it was a small oven. My preliminary search brought up about 3 results. If only 4 out of almost 8 billion people know, that’s not good. Those are not good numbers. I decided I did not want to be in the minority and went back online to buy an Air Fryer.
I have purchased Black and Decker appliances in the past and been happy so I thought I would go with Black and Decker. I googled Black and Decker Air Fryer. This is what came up in my search results.
Is Black and Decker in on the joke or is Black and Decker just admitting that an Air Fryer is an oven?
After finding these Black and Decker results, once again, I started worrying about myself.
By now it was after 1:00 AM and I decided to go to sleep.
I made a vow to stay off google after midnight.
“Tomorrow night I will do something more relaxing before bed, like re-watching the Matrix with a notepad and pen in hand.”
Then again, perhaps when I wake up in the morning, I will forget all the time I spent googling and the fact that millions of people on earth think they bought an Air Fryer.
An air Fryer is just an oven by another name
But right before I went back to sleep, the entrepreneurial side of me kicked in and I wondered if I had stumbled on a pot of gold. This is a pot of gold that’s a little more accessible because all you have to do is rename a product.
These were some of my ideas.
1) Hand-held lead expresser
Former name: Pencil
2) Flat style wood abuse survivor
Former name: Paper
3) Post deconstruction food journey facilitator.
Former Name: Spit
3) Corpus wide soap distributor
Former name: Rag
4) Heel to Floor contact softener
Former name: Carpet
I realized that it would be very hard to convince millions of people that my corpus wide soap distributor was a rag.
So how did someone convince millions of people that a small oven was an Air Fryer?
I am not proud of this decision but I decided not to reach out for help. I decided not to call anyone at 1:00 AM. to ask why people were calling small ovens Air Fryers.
So, what is the answer to the question, “What do you do if it’s 1:00 a.m. and you are having serious concerns about yourself?”
Go to bed.
What do you do if you realize that others may be losing their minds? The response is the same.
Go to bed.
Just go to bed.
