Christmas 1995

Thirteen years ago, almost to the day, I caught on fire. The following blog entry fills in the details.

December 1995 was not a banner month for me. I had already gone skiing (for the first time ever) that month in New Mexico, and things had not gone well. After an unfortunate mishap with a lift on the bunny slope, I was in an air cast and on crutches.

Despite my injuries, I rallied to attend the annual M family extravaganza in you know where, TX. My task: peel and cube potatoes for mashed potatoes. I hobbled around the kitchen collecting my acoutrement (read: crap I needed) to begin the potato peeling fiasco. I asked for a knife, and my mom said "Just grab one out of the knife block by the stove". I reached for the knife...

I'm going to stop here for a little back story. My mom had ALWAYS had an electric stove. This was her first year in a new house with a gas stove, and there was definitely a learning curve involved.

Also, just to give you a visual, I was wearing baggy pants and a VERY baggy sweater. The sweater was a gift to Winifred (I'm not afraid to use your real name, punk!) that he never received since he DUMPED me three days before Christmas. But I digress...

So, I reached across the gas stove for the knife, and heard a small "poof" sound. At about the same instant, I realized that I was on fire. Flames spanned from my wrist to my shoulder, and were burning about six inches out from my sleeve. I was frozen in awe and horror. I flapped my arm, and the massively huge sweater folded over on itself and snuffed out the flames. In the midst of this, my mother dredged up her "Stop, Drop and Roll" training from her elementary school years, and started screaming "Get down! Get down!" as she attempted to wrestle me (and my crutches) to the floor. I fought furiously, yelling back "I'm out! I'm out!" as I desperately tried to remain upright.

My efforts were fruitless. A mother's will is stronger than any child's, even an adult child, and I was going to get down whether I liked it or not. I was successfully knocked to the floor, crutches flying as my already injured ankle was twisted again. I was laughing and crying at the same time.

To answer the obvious question: how the heck did you catch on fire...I offer this explanation. My mom thought she needed to turn the burner on to "warm it up". I'm still unclear as to how you "warm up" an open flame, but there must be logic in that somewhere, right? Since she had the burner on low, I was unable to see the blue flame in the dim light of the kitchen, and did not notice as my sleeve brushed against it.

Also, my sweater was not damaged in the above incident. I thought this was a Christmas miracle, until my friend C pointed out that since I used liquid fabric softener to wash the sweater, the residue from that is probably what caught on fire so easily. Lessons learned!