Story Of The Fire

I recently realized while reading my comments that I never wrote the story to go along with the fire. I definitely need to write it because of hilarity. Not that others will think it was funny, but because I totally can't stop laughing about it.

Three nights ago (was it really that long ago?) John came over to our apartment. He sat on our couch and talked to me, Lizzy and eventually Alexis about our dietary habits. "What's your favorite food?" "Do you know how to cook?" "How often do you cook?" "What's your favorite thing to cook?" He was mostly railing Lizzy on this. Lizzy lives off of crackers and cheese with an occasional pepperoni to top it off. He was quite entertained by this and kept questioning her on why she didn't cook more.

This led to a loooong discussion on food and why Lizzy doesn't cook. She knows how, but just doesn't do it much. Well, John took off and literally minutes after he left we all started feeling hungry. It was about 7pm. Alexis had left. Lizzy and I went into the kitchen to start cooking and Erica was doing homework at the table.

I wanted to make my first quesadilla. Never made one before. I had come up with this idea to use my spaghetti sauce, cheese and corn to make a quesadilla. Mmmmmm! As I was shredding my cheese, Lizzy pulled out some frozen stuff and chicken. She asked if she could borrow my pan and some vegetable oil. No prob!

As I went to put my quesadilla on the heat, I looked over at Lizzy's creation. Let me stop here to point out that both of us were using the back burners. Our front burners have both been broken since the day we got here (yeah, we need to get on fixing that... but that's beside the point...). Anyway, back to the story.

As I was putting my quesadilla on the back right burner, Lizzy noticed that her back left burner was very very hot. Much hotter than she had meant to have it. As I turned to put my cheese away, I noticed her taking it off the back burner and putting it on the front burner to cool down. As I turned back to my quesadilla she was just getting ready to put her chicken in.

And that's where my memory turns into flashes. While the pan was still off the heat and on the front burner, a piece of chicken (or maybe even just the fat, I don't know) dropped into the pan and the flames suddenly shot up!

I could hear Erica screaming behind me. I heard screaming from myself. And Lizzy was standing there, completely frozen just staring at the two foot high flames.

Then the flames started on the back burner. Not just the pot was on fire anymore, the STOVETOP was on fire! And it was spreading! And Erica and I were just screaming and Lizzy was still standing there, frozen, although she managed to mutter the words (calmly, may I add) "Stop screaming."

I imagined our whole apartment in flames. Trying to decide how it would feel when we would all die. I heard a loud POP!* and closed my eyes.

And then I opened them. I was somehow standing in the living room, quesadilla in hand. Erica was rolling on the couch muttering, "Oh my gooooooosh!" And then she grabbed her computer and ran out the apartment calling behind her, "I'm out of here!"

Lizzy was still standing frozen in the kitchen but the pot was in the sink and there was white powder everywhere! (Someone later told us the white powder was baking soda, but something that put a fire that big out that quickly has to be more lethal that baking soda!)

I was inhaling the white powder and I could actually feel it through my nasal passage and coating the inside of my lungs. It tasted gross. It smelled gross. I kept coughing. The fire alarm went off at one point. I turned it off, I think cuz I was the only one who knew how to turn it off (yeah, fire alarms went off constantly at my house).

The powder was slowly settling and there was a pile of white powder on the stove. We decided we should go get the manager. It was after office hours, but we considered this a sort of emergency. What we thought the manager was gonna do, I don't know. I think it was just the idea of having someone else, older and wiser, there to talk to.

Lizzy didn't want to go over there alone, but we were also scared to leave the apartment in case the fire started again. We finally decided there was no way a fire would start again and went to the managers. There was no answer. We were both laughing this whole time.

As we walked back to my apartment I saw Elise next door to our apartment. Elise is awesome. We decided to go get her and see what she thought. We showed her the mess. She laughed. We all laughed. We asked her if this seemed important enough to go to the manager's personal apartment. We all decided that we should let them know.

As we went to leave our apartment, we were all hysterical with laughter, and I was in front. I opened the door and gasped in fright because David was standing right on our doorstep. I turned back to Elise and Lizzy and we all just kept laughing. David just stood there looking confused. "I guess you didn't hear me knock?" Yeah, awkward silence and it turned out he was looking for Erica. We told him she left screaming and he left, probably thinking we were all wackos.

The manager's still never answered. We went back home and decided we should start cleaning it up since the majority of the dust had settled. Lizzy called her aunt who told her to vacuum it up. But our vacuum doesn't have that sucker thingy. So we just used paper towels. A LOT of paper towels.

As we were cleaning it seemed that everyone in the world felt like dropping by. Erica had another friend come. This guy came by trying to sell us a starving student card. Oh, and I forgot to mention the group of girls huddled shamelessy around their window peering down at our apartment because they heard the screams and later, laughter. Yes, this whole night was filled with all kinds of laughter.

Now don't forget my quesadilla! I didn't. In my mind I knew that those metal things above the stove were for fires, so I took my quesadilla away asap so it didn't get covered in white crap. I put my quesadilla in the fridge after the fire. But I still wanted to eat it! Elise said I could make it at her apartment. I used her stove after we accomplished the majority of the cleaning of our stove. On my way walking back to my apartment, my hand got tired of holding my hot pan by the handle. So I brought my other hand up to rest the pan on my hand. Bad idea because the pan was hot off the stove.

This explains the three blisters and other burns on my right hand. Good thing I'm a lefty. And yeah, don't worry, the burns aren't that bad, but I do have a blister.

We opened up the stove and cleaned under it. The white powder seriously coated every single inch of the kitchen. It was such a mess. We took the whole stove apart and cleaned it. The next morning I found a nice layer of white powder all over my cereal boxes that I keep on top of the fridge. Groooooss!

By taking the stove apart, we accidentally put the burners out in the wrong places, so now it's the back two burners that don't work instead of the front two. That's handy. We filled out a maintenance request to get a new white powder popper thingy and we sent an email to the manager explaining what happened.

What a fun night! Pretty sure my adrenaline was rolling the whole rest of the night. I'm glad we're not dead. I'm glad we laughed so hard my sides hurt.

We told John the story the next day when he stopped by again. He was practically rolling on the floor laughing.

Hopefully we'll get another white powder poofer soon. Lizzy is too scared to use the stove anymore until we get one.

*I only heard one pop, and then it felt like two minutes later that the white powder mess exploded everywhere... but keep in mind my eyes were closed. Lizzy didn't hear any pop and Erica heard two pops.