While I was a student at BYU, I worked as a graduate assistant for Eric Denna. Eric was one of my favorite professors at BYU. He also played an influential role in my choosing to get a Ph.D. and become a professor.
In December 1993, Eric and Lyn asked Annette and me to babysit their five children for them while they went to an academic conference in Hawaii for several days. Jamie was one year old. Annette was pregnant with Tanner.
The Denna children were very well-behaved. All of them were in school except for the youngest son Tate. We would cook breakfast for them and get the oldest children off to school. Then, I would go to the BYU campus for the day. I would be home to help greet the kids when they got home from school.
On Friday night, we watched a movie. The daughter who was about 9 or 10 made popcorn for us to eat. She popped a big brown paper bag full of popcorn. She melted butter for the popcorn and put salt in it. As we ate the popcorn, some of the other kids complained that the popcorn did not taste like it had salt on it and the oldest daughter got the salt shaker and added some more salt.
As we ate more popcorn, some of the kids said the popcorn was spicy tasting. When we got to the bottom of the bag, we could see salt and pepper in the bag. It turned out that the daughter who made the popcorn accidentally put pepper on the popcorn instead of salt.
So, I can say that I once ate salt and pepper popcorn.
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