Did I ever tell you about the time I caught myself on fire? No?
It was July 1995 and it came as a complete surprise to me. In retrospect, it probably should not have.
My favorite restaurant at the time was Espana’s, a Southwest Bar & Grill in Los Banos, California. My menu item of choice: flour tortilla chips. In fact, they are not even on the menu. They simply bring them to your table when you sit down like other Mexican restaurants bring you corn tortilla chips, at which point you devour them, die, and go to flour tortilla chip heaven.
One evening after work, I had a hankering for flour tortilla chips. Alas, Los Banos was forty miles from my home. Plus, I was already in PJ’s and wet hair because it had been a hot day so I took a shower to cool off first thing when I got home. I was so in for the night.
But hey! I had a stove! And flour tortillas! And oil! Now, not being much of a cook back then, I read the directions on the bottle of vegetable oil to be sure I was doing it right: “Do not leave heating oil unattended.”
Naturally I proceeded to pour the oil in a pan, turn the heat on high, and go outside to smoke a cigarette.
As I sat on my shady patio relaxing after a long day of number-crunching, I saw a flicker of something out of the corner of my eye. HOLY GOD MY STOVE IS IN FLAMES!
Now here is where I learned something about myself, something important I must keep in mind should any emergency-type situations arise in the future: mine is a deceptively calm panic.
I did not run around screaming and freaking out. I calmly put out my cigarette, came inside, and determined what to do. The problem is, calm does not equal rational.
I turned off the burner. Good.
I moved the pan off the hot burner. Good.
At this point, I should have put a lid on the pan or dumped flour on it or some other rational way of putting out the flames. Instead, my body interpreted the “Out out out!” instruction screaming from my brain as “Pick up the flaming pan and take it OUTside.”
::sigh:: It all seems so silly NOW.
As I walked the flaming pan from my tiny kitchen to the patio slider, the oil sloshed over the side of the pan, across my hand, and left a burning trail along the carpet. I then dropped the pan onto the patio cement and watched the flaming oil jump out to sprout little flame tide pools all over the cement. Lucky for me, it did not land on anything flammable, like the wood fence, the wood chip mulch, or my plastic patio furniture.
As I cursed my stupidity, I turned to deal with the indoor flames. The carpet, thank god, went out by itself but there was a tiny flame up in the stove hood vent that I could not reach.
I popped out my front door to retrieve the fire extinguisher mounted there but could not for the life of me get the pin out. The instructions said to pull the pin before depressing the handle. I pulled the thing that was attached to the handle, it came off, and I depressed the handle. Nothing.
It took about a minute (i.e. an eternity) for me to realize the thing I pulled off was not, in fact, the pin but something that was tied around the handle and now that I had depressed the handle several times thinking the pin was out, the pin was irretrievably bent and stuck.
OH GOD, MY KITCHEN IS ON FIRE AND I CANNOT EVEN WORK THE DAMN FIRE EXTINGUISHER. I AM GOING TO DIE OF STUPIDITY.
Perhaps it was time for some outside help. I called 911 and explained I had a small kitchen fire but everything was under control except a tiny flame up in my stove hood and, since I live on the bottom floor of a two-story building, could they come take a look at it for me?
A simple request, I thought. Send a fireman or two with an extinguisher.
Soon ten hunky firemen were tromping through my tiny apartment in full regalia. Big hats. Big boots. Big yellow fire-retardant suits.
Big muscles.
I would have been in heaven if not for the part where the initial shock was wearing off and my hand started to throb.
After I made the 911 call and before the firemen arrived, I realized I was still in my PJ’s, which consisted of a giant T-shirt that fell to just below my knees, so I changed into a normal T-shirt and gym shorts. As I tucked the shirt in with my left hand, I accidentally scraped it against the inside of my shorts. It HURT. I looked down in horror to see the skin slough off of my thumb, two fingers, and the back of my hand.
Oh barf.
The nice firemen had me stand over the sink while they poured distilled water over my hand, which had sprouted a couple of blisters, each the size of a quarter. I tried to wrap my mind around how I could have blisters - which are made of skin, right? – in an area where I had just seen the skin fall away to reveal something I did not want to look at.
As I pondered this, I asked the nice firemen why the water they were pouring over my hand was so hot. They spoke slowly and carefully to explain to the brain damaged girl the water was, in fact, ice cold and proved it by pouring some on my other hand.
They suggested I go to the emergency room.
Several hours - and pain pills - later, my left hand was trussed up like a Butterball turkey. Seriously, after slathering my hand with burn cream, they wrapped it in a bandage and put stretchable compression webbing around it. Just. Like. A turkey.
The next few months were less than fun, with physical therapy to SCRAPE the raw areas so they did not scar and exercises to STRETCH newly forming skin so I would retain full use of my hand. I pretty much hated my physical therapist, though he is truly a nice human being. I was also supposed to wear a single glove, a la Michael Jackson, so my new skin would not hyper-pigment when exposed to the sun. I was not a very good patient, as it turns out. If you look closely at the back of my hand, you can see the faint mottling.
I had partial thickness (2nd degree) burns over most of my hand with a few spots nearing full thickness (3rd degree.) Did you know 3rd degree burns do not hurt because the sensory nerve receptors have been destroyed? You still get to feel pain, though, because of all the 2nd degree burn areas abutting the 3rd degree areas, which are pinkish-red, with blisters, and very painful. How nice.
My burn only covered half of my hand, which is about 1-2% of my body, and I was in agony. I cannot begin to imagine what more severe burn victims go through.
43% off all burn accidents occur at home, people.
Smoking really does cause fires...er, smoking + stupidity.
Never leave heating oil unattended.
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Since my little cooking accident, I have held various incarnations of the email address Scorch795.
Some people think it refers to my self-perceived hotness - others, arrogance about my flaming wit - when in reality, I am simply more literal (and less creative) than people surmise.
Sillies.
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Hat tip to Higgie for reminding me I had not yet written about this. :)
