I hate fondue, but I love this trick

So today was the birthday of a friend. She's married to a former cow-orker that's pretty cool to hang out with. She wanted to go to the Melting Pot (eh) for her bday dinner. The Melting Pot is a fondue place, which I'm not crazy about. If I'm going to pay $30 for just my meal, I kind of would like someone else to cook it. I'm lazy, damn it! Plus meat that's been fondued just doesn't taste that good. Perfectly good filet mignon, which should have been grilled was reduced to just another hunk of boiled meat.

My advice: Go to a real restaurant with people who will prepare the meal for you then go to your fondue place for dessert. Even the manager told us that dessert was the best part.

Anyway, when you go to a fondue place, they constantly warn you about not touching the... fondue pots? I'm sure there's some fancy-schmancy name for them to appeal to the stupid yuppies who just walked in from the cigar bar that was a few stores down. I don't know what they are.

"Look how suave and upwardly mobile we are. While Biff went to the cigar bar, I stopped in at the overpiced toy stored and picked up educational toys for Jennniphyr and Teighlor, and then we went and fondued."

They're pots, and they're hot; that's the thing. So right after the first warning, I'm taking off one of my keys from my keyring. I have no idea what it goes to, and I suspect I have it on there just so I can do this trick once every 2 years. It's got a round hole at the top, and if you press you finger into it somewhat hard, it will leave a reddened bump on your finger that looks like a heat blister.

So you act like you touch something hot, give a little yelp of pain, and blow on it. Your table-mates will want to know what happened, and you show them your faux-blister. They'll either sympathize with you or mock you, depending on what kinds of friends they are. At that point, you pick up the salt shaker and put some on your faux-blister (they might yell at you some more - my friends did), and you rub the salt into your wound. The rubbing makes the blister go away, but to your friends, it looks like salt can somehow cure blisters. At that point, you can leave them with that impression or show them how the trick works (I opted for the latter - I like my friends and don't want them rubbing salt into their wounds... when I'm not there to enjoy it).

They all laughed and thought it was a cool trick. Brian, the aforementioned cow-orker, knows when I'm doing a trick even if he doesn't understand how it's done and had a little smile on his face the entire time. He enjoys a good magic trick, even buying himself an Invisible Deck once.

Looking back, I should also have taken the lemon from my drink and squeezed some lemon juice on it as well. Ah, well.

I got this trick from Penn and Teller's book, "How To Play with Your Food." An invaluable guide to fake burn tricks, making Satan's face appear on a tortilla, and making a jello Valentine's Day Heart cake that bleeds when you cut into it. They suggest that you actually carry salt in a little envelope labeled as a homeopathic cure, which you then sell to your "friends" because, hey, if they're stupid enough to believe in homeopathy, then you need new friends.