Don't you just hate it when you burn your tongue? Being left with that weird tingly sensation for hours, or if you're really unlucky - days. As though all your taste buds have been haphazardly scraped off with a butter knife.

How about drinking a really hot drink through a straw? That's always a fun time. I truly hope there aren't too many people out there that do it on a regular basis, but then again, I like to live in a bubbly world where there are no masochists.

I remember the first time I did that. I was somewhere between eight- and ten- years old and I was in an Indian restaurant with my family and had ordered my favourite: Dosai and Teh Tarik (man, I could really go for some of that right now).

Naturally, the drinks came first. I, being one of the lazier specimens of humankind, reached for a straw with which to sip that piping hot drink with so that I wouldn't have to mess with the business of lifting up a cup to my lips.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think the real reason I used the straw was because the glass holding it was really hot and I was having trouble getting a good, comfortable grip on it. But I like the lazy reason better.

Anyway, there I am, with a straw sticking out of my Teh Tarik, about to take a sip and my brother warns me that it'll be hotter if I drink it though a straw. Well, he is my brother and I have long since sworn, as his mortal enemy and sibling, to not take anything he says seriously (he, who nicknamed me S.S. - stupid Sherryl, silly Sherryl, etc.). Besides, he has to be yanking my chain. Common eight- to ten- year old sense tells me that a drink can't possibly get hotter when it is simply sitting in a glass on a table.

So, I take a sip.

The rest of the memory is somewhat fuzzy but I do recall something along the lines of spitting the drink out at near lightning speed back into the cup. And following that, laughter from across the table.

And that was my first-time-I-sipped-a-hot-drink-through-a-straw story.