Don’t Do This Anywhere Ever

We were newlyweds. I was in our 2nd apartment, down the hall from our first apartment (that we left after only a couple weeks when the prettier bigger place opened up) in a small economically depressed down town between two cornfields, on the same street as 5 bars that let out screaming drunks at 1am, all geared up to have a good fight under my window…at 1am, when I’d wake from horrid nightmares to their vicious slurring anger at volumes passing sirens reach. High ceilings and radiator heat don’t have enough appeal to stick around that nonsense for long.
But…in the two months we did live there, while David was at work one afternoon, I tried to cook cat fish.
Pan on the burner, fish in the pan, heat beneath, a bit of oil, all set. Domestic in the kitchen I was not at all, or even properly knowledgeable.
Here’s how it went. The pan started smoking and in a flash flames had engulfed the fish and spread through out the pan. I did not know about grease fires. I did not know to cover it instead of douse it. I was a DORK! I doused it. The flames grew. I panicked, rushed the pan to the bathtub where it would have more room to be a fire while I continued to panic. In the tub, the flames licked up higher. What happened next was a blur, but a little voice deep inside, the one that heard Mr. Fireman when he came to my elementary school 15 years earlier, suggested that covering the pan was my only hope. I don’t know what I covered it with. I only know the fire went out, my heart was pounding fast and I was in a cold sweat.
I felt like an idiot, sure I would not be using stainless steel frying pans for a long time if I ever would again. This moment is so embarrassing I have only told a few people, maybe only David. Now I’m telling you.
Later, when we moved to a little bit larger town in the corn fields I asked a friend, an older woman we liked to visit, how to cook fish. She didn’t even know how to answer my question, the answer was so obvious. Pan, heat, oil or water, wait til it’s done all the way through, put on plate. Yeah, now I know and cook fish all the time. Regardless, I didn’t use a stainless steel pan for another 9 years.
Lessons? Too many to count.
You know what else I remember from that afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day and I liked how the light settled on everything in the living room, which contrasted with the dark scary bathroom scene. Ugh.