The Stove

Throughout my life I have had many strange incidents with fire—which is a beautiful way to start any blog post. I have not died, or burned down a house though, so I feel relatively confident sharing some of these experiences.

I went through a phase of my life where someone who didn't know me well would have thought I was suicidal.  I had burns up and down my arms because I would forget sheet pans out of the oven were hot or I'd accidentally slide cookie sheets into my arms.  It almost become a source of pride to have at least two or three burn scars on my arms.  I have four brothers, scars are cool.



The first time I caught the kitchen on fire was when I was a freshman.  We had a toaster oven, which somehow my brain equated more with a microwave than an oven (even though "oven" is in the name).  I was continually putting glass plates in the toaster oven and then pulling them out with my bare hands—which led to burnt fingers and palms.  After I finally wizened up I took a hot-mit to the toaster oven.  Of course the mit was made out of cotton . . . and of course I got it too close to the red-hot wire terminals and tah-dah—fire.  Thankfully I had the presence of mind to smother the flaming mit before I did anything too extensively damaging.  It began as my roommate's cute red hot-mit, but after that ordeal she let me keep the blackened thing.

The next incident was during my sophomore year.  There were six of us girls, all living in a rather old, broken down house.  This house had a particularly special stove . . . and several particularly special smoke detectors.  The stove would smoke sometimes, it even got so bad that my roommates and I stopped freaking out when a range would spontaneously combust and we'd have a fire on the stove—which was only a problem the one day our window was open and our landlord was outside shoveling snow.  We put that fire out really quick.

A lot of the time the fire wasn't the problem, the smoke detector was.  There was a smoke detector in the kitchen—which is both smart and idiotic at the same time.  We spent a lot of time up on a stool waving plates and cookie sheets back and forth in front of the small blaring detector that hung from the ceiling.  I think my favorite part of the whole ordeal was the fact that the fire detectors would go off when we boiled water.  There is such a thing as a fire detector being too sensitive.

Lastly, but not leastly was the time we started an oil fire on our stove—different stove from my sophomore year.  My roommate and I were trying to be legitimate chefs and so we decided to make homemade fries.  We started with potatoes and cut them up, which went alright, but then we had to fry them . . . which didn't go quite as seamlessly.  Hot oil, young girls—to make this better I thought this would be a good opportunity to invite a few people over.

There was a girl in my apartment complex who was kind of shy and quiet, so I thought I'd befriend her.  Unfortunately this was not the best time to befriend a rather reserved girl seeing as we started our kitchen on fire that same day, while she was there.  Fire in the kitchen isn't exactly kosher for any of us—but I'm pretty sure it freaked her out.  My roommate handled the fire very well, she just polotely asked me to turn around from the tomatoes I was cutting and help her for a moment.  Imagine my surprise when i turned around to see a foot tall orange flame.

We put baking powder on the fire, we got it put out pretty quickly, no burning rags or flaming curtains.  The smoke dissipated eventually.  We laughed awkwardly while Kim (my shy friend) stared at us with wide eyes.  "Haha, wasn't that a funny adventure?  Aren't you glad we invited you over for dinner??"  I don't think she was amused.

Dinner turned out fine, albeit a little potato light because we decided to stop frying fries after the fire.  We didn't realize what a lasting impact our friendly invitation had made on Kim at first, it slowly dawned on us how shocked and probably frightened she had been when she never accepted another invitation over to our apt.  I think she successfully evaded ever coming into our apartment again the rest of the time we lived in the same complex. 

And thus ends the story of my life as an accidental pyro—I hope.