When I was about eight or nine years old I made Jell-o for the first time. I made lime jello to have with dinner but, this being my first experience, it didn't turn out right. That's putting it nicely. I boiled the water, stirred in the powder, added cold water, mixed it, and poured it into a dish to set up in the fridge--all according to instructions. But I didn't completely dissolve the gelatin, so at dinner-time there was about a 1/4-inch layer of gritty, rubbery stuff on the bottom and a kind of thin, slimy, syrupy layer over the top of that. (Yum!) To save my feelings, my family heroically ate it anyway. Even I could tell it wasn't good, but finally Mark (about 7-8 years older than me) said, "Mmmm! This is really good!" That heart-felt statement did Melanie in (she's 5 years older than me). She started laughing and so inhaled some of her tasty treat. As she coughed and gasped, Mom, who has a little tendency to over-react, started saying things like, "She's choking!!" (to the family, in general) "Put your arms up!" (to Melanie) "Slap her on the back!" (to Dad), and a lot of other similar stuff, which made my sister crack-up even more. Finally, just as Melanie was starting to regain control Mom yelled, "Take her outside and squirt her with the hose!!" At that, Melanie nearly died from laughing--and breathing Jello--and so prolonged both her agony and my mom's.
Since you want to avoid this kind of trauma in your family, heed the moral of this story: Make sure you completely dissolve your gelatin before adding the cold water!
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