Living alone for the first time ever is totally exciting. It's also totally a learning experience. There's a lot to figure out, like how to cook, clean, pay your bills on time, and so on! Some of those early lessons can be pretty humbling, too. That much is true for one 20-year-old who was living on his own for the first time when he learned that he was using his oven completely (and hilariously) wrong.
Luckily, thanks to his cousin tweeting about it, we all get to enjoy the rookie mistake. The tweet, a screenshot of the hilarious conversation between Henpecked Hal and his 20-year-old cousin, has since gone viral. And it’s not hard to see why.
It started off when the young man asked his cousin how often his oven should be cleaned. While at first, the conversation seemed normal enough, it got interesting real quick. Hal answered that he “pretty much never” cleans his oven, and that definitely confused his cuz.
“Seriously? I’m cleaning it every time. Its not worth it,” he wrote back.
That totally confounded Hal. Because … I mean, why would anyone be cleaning their oven that often? But when Hal expressed confusion, his cousin filled him in on what was going on.
"The bottom gets gross and full of blood or grease," he said.
Uh … wait, what?? Obviously, something was going very wrong.
"You're talking about the baking sheet or the actual oven?" Hal texted back. A pretty legitimate question, because why on earth would the bottom of the oven be getting so much action? That's the whole purpose of a baking sheet! Well, that and so you don't have to put the food directly on the oven rack.
Turns out, that's exactly what this dude was doing — putting his food directly on the rack.
"Baking sheet? My oven has metal grills on the inside," he wrote. LOLz. After a few more texts were exchanged, the truth came out. No baking sheets were being used in the rookie's cooking ventures.
“One sec… I need a beer for this,” Hal responded before he could really get into it with the 20-year-old.
Of course, he schooled his cousin on his ridiculous error. Then he posted the whole exchange to Twitter, writing, “My 20-year-old cousin got his own apartment and it’s going pretty well.” Of course, it quickly went viral because O.M.G.
It was all in good fun, so it seems. Plenty of other people took to Twitter to share their rookie cooking mistakes, too. Still, this one pretty much took the cake (sans baking sheet, probs).
Hal spoke to Today Food about the text exchange, as well. He said that his cousin was a “fast food connoisseur” and had only started cooking for himself to try to save money.
Hal said that his cousin's mom tried to teach him about cooking, but he wasn't super interested. He assumed he'd figure it out with the help of the internet. "As you can see, he didn't spend much time on research, rather leaning on his keen culinary instinct," he said.
At least the rookie cook knew that something was off. I mean, how could he not? He told his cousin that the aftermath of his cooking experiments in the oven looked like a "crime scene." Yeah. We believe it!
“Once he learned his error he was quite embarrassed, but he’s certainly found the humor in the situation,” Hal said. “Frankly, I think he’s just relieved not to have to clean the oven tonight.” At least there’s that!
The rookie definitely had to have a sense of humor about the whole exchange, at least enough to allow Hal to post about it. But he didn't want to speak with Today about his error. At least it's a learning experience, though. Chances are, he'll never go without a baking pan again.
That's especially true because now it seems like he's going to go back home to his mama for some much-needed lessons.
"I'll be spending way more than an hour talking to my mom now," the 20-year-old wrote in a text message that Hal shared. "I'm heading there for a cooking class this weekend."
Thank goodness for that.
