A family urban legend has been confirmed as "true".

There's been a funny story that's been told for years in my family, but I was never sure it was factual. So when I talked with my Mom the other day, I asked her for the "real story". Lo and behold, she confirmed that the story was true. So without any guilt about spreading a falsehood, let me tell you a tale about my Mom, some chicken, and a bag of potato chips.

There was my Mom, a pretty, young housewife living with my dad and three kids in Victor, NY, a little village about 20 miles out of Rochester. One afternoon, she decided to expand her cooking repertoire with a new recipe: baked chicken coated with potato chip crumbs. Sounds pretty good, huh? She got out all of the ingredients and put them out on the yellow linoleum counter in our kitchen. Chicken? Check! Egg? Check! Parsley flakes? Check! Potato chips? Check! But wait...the recipe calls for "potato chip crumbs" and the chips in the bag were whole. What to do?

I'm guessing that several options for turning those chips into crumbs passed through my Mom's head.

"Well, I could pour the chips on to the kitchen counter and then crush them with my hands," she might have thought. "Or better yet," she may have considered, "I could pour the chips into a bag and then crush them with my rolling pin." Her thought process evidently continued. "But wait," she might have said aloud, "I've got an even better idea!"

My mom left the kitchen and walked to our home's front door with two objects in her hands: the bag of potato chips and her car keys. Out the door, she descended the two steps that led to our front yard, and from there, walked over to the family car parked in our driveway.

Perhaps looking up and down the street to make sure our neighbor friends were watching to see how she had solved this particular kitchen issue, ("Look George -- Dorothy figured out how to make crumbs out of potato chips!"), Mom placed the bag of chips on the driveway, squarely behind the rear wheel of the car we affectionately called "The Bomb", stepped inside, and turned the key in the ignition. Perhaps she even snuck a glance of herself in the rearview mirror, smiled, and gave herself a little satisfied wink. My mom then dropped the gear shift into "reverse" stepped on the gas.

It rained potato chip crumbs in my front yard that afternoon. Of course, that vacuum-sealed bag of chips exploded all over the driveway when the back tire of The Bomb rolled over it.

I don’t remember if we ever got our potato chip encrusted chicken that night, and I don’t recall if my Mom actually told us what had happened, or if one of the neighbors witnessed the explosion and couldn't wait to tell us the story. In any case, we always give my mom a hard time about her unique method of using a two-ton vehicle to crush a 16 ounce bag of potato chips.

When I asked my mom if I could tell this story on my blog, she good-naturedly said, "Sure, but people are going to think I'm stupid!". Trust me - my mom is FAR from stupid – we all do silly things once in a while. So kudos to my Mom - one of the most pleasant and fun-loving people I've ever known – for being able to laugh at herself and letting me share this story with you.