My daughter had a friend staying the night recently.  They are both in the 8th grade, so they aren’t that smart yet, apparently.  After reading this, you’ll understand why I say that.

We had a nice dinner, and we were watching television in the den.  The kitchen is the next room over, and we have a pretty open floorplan, so it’s nice to watch TV and also have the option to roam into the kitchen for a snack.

The girls decided to make some of those cut-and-bake cookies, so I told them to make sure they cleaned up their mess, and enjoy the cookies.  They turned on the stove, put the cookies on the “baking sheet”, and then put them in the oven.  So far, so good.

I was still watching TV, which is a rare occurrence simply because of my 2L law school student status, so about 5 minutes later, tops, I noticed that a strange smell was flowing from the kitchen.  I called to the girls, and told them that I thought their cookies were done.  I had lost track of time, and I thought that the cookies truly were burning.  It smelled that way, anyway.

They came back into the kitchen to retrieve the cookies and opened the oven.  My daughter made a small noise and then said I should probably come into the kitchen, which I did.  Much to my dismay, the “baking sheet” was melted around the oven rack.

When I asked them what they had used to put the cookies on, they said it was a baking sheet.  I told them that they don’t make plastic baking sheets for a reason – they melt in the oven.

Thankfully, I was able to pry the plastic off my oven rack.  If it had been in there another 30 seconds, it would have probably ruined my oven element.

The cookies were goners.  They were literally part of the baking sheet.

The funniest part of the whole thing was that the only thing that was still readable on the raised print on the baking sheet were the words, “DO NOT PUT IN OVEN.”  The remaining words were completely unreadable.