I have often wondered what the reaction was of the first human person to discover popcorn. That is, the person who first saw what makes it different from other types of maize.
There are a lot of different species of maize, the grain Americans call “corn.” Nearly all of them DO NOT EXPLODE. Most native American peoples ate corn and corn products all the time, blissfully unaware that there was this ONE kind of corn that sounded like fireworks going off and remained delicious afterwards.
It is my understanding that the first known popcorn was in Peru. It was well known among the locals before the Europeans showed up. But what must it have been like for the first primitive Peruvian cavemen when they realized that if you tried to cook this one kind of dried corn, it’d BLOW THE HELL UP!
I envision a shelter in the jungles of Peru. This one woman has a few ears of dried corn, and has put them near the fire while she does something else. Meanwhile, her husband is sitting around doing nothing, as men traditionally do when women are actually preparing food or doing something constructive.
K-POK!
The man jumps a little, startled. His eyes dart to the source of the sound. One of the ears of corn has moved.
PAK! K’PAK! POK, POK, POK!
The man jumps to his feet. “What the HELL?”
The woman runs into the shelter. “What? What’s wrong?”
PAKPOOK! KRAKRAKRAKRAK! POKKAPOKKAPOK! KRAK! SNAK! POKKAKRAKKA!
By now, the air begins to fill with fluffy kernels, rocketing around randomly in the little shelter. The man screams like a little girl and desperately tries to avoid the hot corn rockets!
The woman stands there with her mouth open. “What the hell did you DO?”
The man looks at her indignantly. “ME? I didn’t do ANYTHING! I was just SITTING there, and all of a sudden, the corn began to EXPLODE!”
The woman sets her jaw. “Bullshit. You did SOMETHING. Corn doesn’t just EXPLODE.”
“THIS CORN DID!” the man cries. By now, the corn has cheerfully gone to town, and the kernels are bouncing off the angry man and woman, who have by now focused much more on each other than on the phenomenon of their noisy dinner.
“We’ve been eating corn for YEARS, now, and it has NEVER BLOWN UP! NOW, WHAT DID YOU DO TO IT?”
“Swelp me, I didn’t do ANYTHING! I was just SITTING HERE, minding my own business, and – yowtch! – the corn started to DANCE and POP and – erk! – it… it started DOING THIS!”
The couple, at this point, continue to argue until one of the ears, knocked loose by the popping corn, falls into the fire and erupts in a shower of flaming kernels, requiring the argument to be tabled while they join forces to put the fire out.
I’d like to think that afterwards, they tried the experiment again, and that the husband was exonerated of shenanigans.
But some part of me says that the wife quietly gossipped about the incident, and not long afterwards, behind his back, the guy became known less as “Heart-Of-Jaguar,” and more as “Frightened-By-Dinner…”
