Of Men and Medicine

Here is an SAT question to make you feel young again:

birthday cake : candles :: popcorn : ______

Answer, after the story...

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They were going to watch the season finale of Lost together, and in keeping with the theme, my friend decided to make black "smoke monster" popcorn. She also printed out pictures of each of the characters and taped them to chopsticks (we eat popcorn with chopsticks). When her pseudo-boyfriend saw it, he really liked it and that was very clear.

Then he takes all the chopsticks out of the bowl and takes the paper figures off.

"Uhh...What are you doing?" she asks.

"I'm giving you back your chopsticks," he says.

...and then he proceeds to crumple up the papers.

"Okay...well, you can do that, but you don't have to do that in front of me," she says.

"Oh! Oh, don't worry, I'm going to recycle it."

...

WTF. How inconsiderate is he that he would just take her creativity and effort, appreciate it for less than a minute, and then just throw it all away! We vented on this for awhile, until she decided that she had to say something to him about being rude.

So she goes over and talks to him, and in his defense, here was his logic:

"It's like a birthday cake! I was just blowing out the candles..."

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Answer:

birthday cake : candles :: popcorn : chopsticks