10:37 a.m.
Sister #1 and I got a late start Black Friday shopping, but still managed to get food court Chinese and plenty of the items off our own Christmas lists…and one or two gifts for the people we were actually supposed to be shopping for.
2:59 p.m.
My mother bought a new microwave. She bought it for two reasons: 1) It was on some crazy better-than-crack Black Friday deal, and 2) she didn’t actually know it yet, but our old microwave was soon to be out of commission.
8:04 p.m.
The fiancé came over to make me and my family homemade nachos. Homemade pico de gallo, homemade guacamole, even homemade chips. The fiancé quickly put us all to work. Putting oil in a pot on the stove, chopping onions, scooping avocados, the works.
Sometime Around When The Fiancé was Opening My Eyes to the Wonder That is Homemade Guacamole
Through the haze of culinary nirvana, we noticed the pot was shaking violently.
“Fiancé , this pot is way too hot,” I said, marveling at my clever rhyme while standing nervously by the stove.
The fiancé moved the pot off the burner saying, “We’ll just let it cool back down then," but he didn’t take the lid off. I was getting hungry and impatient for my nacho fix, so I took the lid off so it would cool faster.
Now, for all of you who know exactly what’s about to happen, just let me say something in my defense. I’m not a complete idiot, you know. I know some stuff about cooking. My mother’s been trying to teach me how to cook for years, but it’s been difficult since I’ve pretty much accepted my fate of starvation or self-inflicted food poisoning. But I know never to pour water on a grease fire. I just had no idea that air is what starts one.
8:13 p.m.
The moment I pulled the lid off the pot, a plume of flame shot in the air. The house was absolute chaos. The smoke alarms were blaring, Sister #1 was screaming, The fiancé was attempting to pick up the lid without getting burned to put it back on the pot and smother the fire, and my brother was running for the fire extinguisher. There was also an awful lot of smoke. Really smelly, thick, chokes-you-whenever-you-try-to-breathe smoke. Why, you ask? Because our stove is located directly underneath our microwave.
My father, in an effort to control the smoke problem, sent me and sisters #1 and 2 to open every window and door in the house. He turned and opened a window in the kitchen himself, but as he turned around to tend to the raging fire, his elbow knocked over our knife block. So, as if the situation wasn’t dangerous enough, there were now knives scattered on the floor as well.
At this point, I felt it was safe to assume it could not humanly get worse. And as is always the case with that assumption, I was wrong.
8:16 p.m.
Brother returned with the fire extinguisher, which would have been awesome. If it had, you know, worked.
8:17 p.m.
Instead, we opted for salt, nearly burning to death trying to get it, because of course (OF COURSE) it was kept in a cabinet partially obscured by flames.
We must have poured the entire container on the shit show that was our stove. Burning pot, melted plastic, oil splatter…all covered in salt. And Still. F*cking. Burning.
We were seriously running out of options.
This whole time I’d been holding the front door open, a gloriously safe distance of 20 feet from the kitchen. I was about to turn and run to the fire station a mile down the road, something we probably should have done when this all started, when my father darted out to the garage and returned with huge rubber gloves I was later informed were for welding. My father does not weld, so I have no idea where he found them, but he put on the magic gloves, carried the fire to the backyard, set it down and walked away without so much as a backward glance.
8:19 p.m.
Without the fire burning, the true nature of the mess in our kitchen became apparent. Salt glistened on every surface. A frigid breeze blew through the house. Cobwebs, now visible due to the fine covering of smoke residue, revealed our already shoddy cleaning abilities. A hole was nearly melted into the door of the (still operable) microwave. Don’t ask how we know it works, we’re all probably dying of radiation.
9:02 p.m.
The kitchen was still a mess, though we had managed to clean up most of the salt, and the fire was still going strong in the backyard, when my mother walked in the door. We all held our breath. But she noticed nothing. She brought in her bags and chattered away about her day shopping while we all stood frozen, glancing at each other, barely daring to hope that she might not notice.
9:03 p.m.
She turned around, her face went white, and she took a scarily long breath that, under less petrifying circumstances, would have impressed me with her diaphragmatic prowess.
“Which pot?” she asked, pain and rage thinly veiled in her voice. “Which pot was it?”
I always thought if I happened to be with the fiancé when death was staring me straight in the face, we would have some magical romantic moment filled with my martyr-esque bravery in the face of imminent doom, and his deep, tragic agony at the death of his one true love. Instead we just glanced at each other, terrified.
“The spaghetti pot…” I mumbled, preparing for the end.
She let out a deep sigh before whispering dangerously, “I’ll be in my room.” We all glanced at my father, unsure if he would abandon his previously calm, not-murderous demeanor and adopt my mother’s anger in order to “present a united front” as parents often do.
9:04 p.m.
“Well,” he said, "you and the fiancé need to go to the store.” Thinking that wasn’t the worst thing he could have said just then, I eagerly jumped on his request.
“Sure, of course, what for?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t supposed to already know.
“We need more oil if we’re going to make these nachos.”
