Saturday, December 08, 2007

my near death experience

so it has taken about a week to recover and get to the point where I can recount this story to you. It was all very sudden and... (who am I kidding, the only reason that I am writing this now, if ever is that it's finals week and there is no better time to procrastinate). Now back to my story.
I was making dinner for myself last Sunday. Veggie tacos in case you are curious (kale and beet greens to be exact, it was yummy but I will spare you the recipe as I probably just grossed a few people out). The veggies were all set to go as a filling to my tacos, all that was left was to heat up some corn tortillas. I don't know about you, but I really like to heat up tortillas over the stove's flame (that is why a gas stove will always be superior to an electric). So I turned on the neighboring burner, but a pot lid was kind of close to it (I have a bad habit of leaving pot lids on the stove because I don't see them as dirty enough to warrant washing, but not quite clean enough to put away, man the digressions are getting out of control). I decided to move the lid after the fact, and I am sure you may be able to guess what happened next. The entire sleeve of my brown cable knit sweater caught on fire! Now this is where it gets a bit troubling. What did I do, you may ask? Stop, drop, and roll? No. Run over to the sink to douse myself in water? No. Before I go on, I must preface this with a disclaimer of sorts.
You see, my limited exposure to fire is: 1. candles 2. birthday candles 3. the fireplace 4. bonfires at the beach
How do I normally put out these said fires? 1. blow it out 2. blow it out 3. let it smolder out 4. let it smolder out
So you can safely assume that I wouldn't let myself smolder out. So instead, you guessed it-- I started blowing on my arm to put the fire out.
When that (obviously) didn't work, I hit myself with the tortillas I was still holding in the other hand. That also didn't work. Finally, my roomie who was just a few feet away saw the flames travelling down my back and came to my rescue. She hit me until the flames went out :)
Oddly enough, when everything was over my sweater was still intact, and the fire had travelled the entire sleeve and back of my sweater in 10 seconds. Our theory is that there was a hair hanging down from the sleeve that caught on fire as I reached over the flame and it burnt up other loose hairs and general fuzz on the sweater. So those of you girls who "shed" alot, let this be a lesson learned.
We ended the night with some much needed drinks at a wine bar for my birthday. I still do owe the roomie a drink for saving my life....