That Girl is on Fire

It is sad, although perhaps not at all strange, that people burn themselves quite frequently when working with ovens and stove ranges and steamers.  For the first few months of my job in a hot kitchen I burned my arms so frequently that I had constant scars all across them.  I never told my manager that I burned myself, rather I'd ignore the burn, pretend it wasn't very bad, and continue working—which may be part of the reason for all the scaring.

I'm not sure why I had such a hard time telling my boss I'd burned myself, I suppose it made me feel vulnerable or stupid, or clumsy.  I remember one particular day I tried picking up a pan that I had just taken out of the oven—tried to pick it up with my bare hand that is.  How do I explain that burn to my kitchen manager?  "I forgot I'd just taken it out of the oven."  "I didn't realize it would burn me."  "I forgot that pans coming right out of the oven could burn you." . . . none of these reasons seemed like very good options, so I went along with my default plan and didn't tell anyone about it.  I got off work shortly afterwards, bought a small cup of ice-cream and drove home holding it between my burnt fingers to keep them from hurting.  By the time I got home the ice-cream was melted and my hand was starting to hurt again—but my boss never knew, which was the entire point of the ordeal.


 There are only two burns that I had to write up with my boss.  One burn was acquired by sliding directly into a very large kettle of very hot sauce—a slip I took right after my boss warned me that the floor was slippery and not to fall in the few minutes it would take to clean the mess up.  I had a cute little circular scar on my elbow for months and had to come to work with band-aids for a while—in fact if I look hard I can still see the scar. 

The other burn I received was a little worse.  In our industrial kitchen we had steam kettles, these are heated by steam rising into a small socket at the bottom of the kettle and the food is warmed up in this way.  The kettles are secured to a table and you have to pour out the sauces into a different container to transport it.  I was training a student at the time, I told him exactly what he should not do to get burned, promptly did exaclty that while I told him not to right in front of him, and poured out a gallon worth of scorching hot horseradish Jus Lie onto my right hand.  My only consolation is that he was there to witness that I did not scream while I did so.

I received second degree burns from the sauce and had to be taken to instant care.  I was told that I could still go to work, but that I was not to do anything to get my hand wet or hot—which worked out very well since I was constantly working around ovens and grills and sinks.  I went to work for the next month with a mummified hand and became somewhat proficient at doing things with my left hand.

During the month it took for my hand to heal I had to go in and get it checked regularly.  On about the third or fourth day after burning my hand they told me they would have to get rid of all the dead skin on my thumb.  I then waited for one of their doctors to come in and take it off.  I waited for her because taking dead skin off of burns was one of her favorite things to do—although I should not judge her because I get some sort of sick pleasure out of peeling the dead skin off of my sunburns.  I'd show you pictures (yes, I took pictures of my hand sitting in the doctor's office waiting for someone to wrap it up again) of what my hand looked like afterwards, but I don't want to gross anybody out.

Perhaps the most rewarding thing that happened because of this experience was that I had a song dedicated to me.  We would listen to music while we worked in the kitchen and one day the song that was playing happend to be "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys.  My boss promptly dedicated the song to me for burning myself and every time we would hear the song he would shout out that it was my song.

Hence, every time I hear "Girl on Fire" I think of hot kitchens and horseradish Jus Lie and burnt thumbs.