Something Worth Crying About

I love onions.  

I hate cutting onions.  I cry like a baby almost every time, unless of course it's an older onion and has lost some of its potency.  Sometimes my glasses act like a shield if I can arch my back enough to keep my face out of the general burst of eye-stinging gas.

At other times, it doesn't matter what I do, I'm gonna cry buckets before it's all over.

So today, I had an epiphany.  A brilliant, truly genius idea.  

I put my cutting board on the stove, turned on the stove-top fan and watched in glee as the invisible gases wafted toward the upward draw.  Problem solved.  I envisioned publishing my findings in a Helpful Hints book somewhere.  My mailbox would fill to overflowing with grateful letters from people all over the country - or even the world - people so thankful that they didn't have to deal with the onion gases anymore.

As these thoughts danced through my head, my eyes began to burn.  Slowly tears formed in my eyes that had nothing to do with the tears of joy I had considered crying as a result of my new-found revelation.  

Lovely as our stove-top fan is, it actually does not vent to the outside.  Instead, the air it sucks up filters through a charcoal filter and jets back into the kitchen - just about eye-level.

So I chopped those onions.  And I cried like a baby.  Maybe not all the tears had to do with the onions...