Tongue-In-Cheek … Foot-In-Mouth

Summer would not be summer unless I managed to accidently light my house on fire with the help from my grill.  There’s just something about the smell of melting vinyl siding which makes me want to stop, drop, roll, and speed-dial the pizza delivery guy.  And 2008 would not be any different.  Well, it was different in the sense that in 2008 I lit the house on fire with assistance from my new propane grill, not my old charcoal grill; a charcoal grill piled sky high with charcoal, and dowsed with enough liter fluid to make the Saudi oil reserves look like a glistening stain found beneath my vehicle, which appeared because my oil pan was leaking, thanks to the highly-trained mechanic at that fast oil changing place who’s name rhymes with “Tiffy Tube” who didn’t properly tighten my oil pan bolt.  Evidently, he was unfamiliar with the “right tighty, lefty loosy” concept.  So, by all means, hand him a wrench and let him work on someone’s vehicle.

Anyway, I was looking through a Harriet Carter knickknackety magazine, you know the ones with all that really cool vitally important stuff like, for example, diapers for your goldfish, lighted nose hair tweezers, teeny tiny functional guillotines used to cut up limes for your margaritas, because the best thing you can do when you are slurring your words and holding onto stuff to keep yourself from tipping over, is to play with sharp metal descending objects and pretend that you are cutting the head off of little green midgets.   And of course the one knickknackety thing I could not live without was a metal rack designed to hold chicken drumsticks and suspend them above a grill’s grilling surface.

Seriously, how cool does that sound?  Okay, if you are someone who doesn’t worship the grill (e.g., a woman or a male ballet dancer, which are arguably one in the same) then you are probably not as enthusiastic as I am about this cooking contraption.  BUT as a grilling guru, a hibachi Houdini, a Weber wizard, let me tell you, my new rack is the neatest thing since the invention of 3rd degree burn cream and skin grafts.

Okay, so here’s what happened.  I walked out onto my back deck, turned on my propane grill, placed my loaded-up chicken drumstick rack in the grill, and closed the lid.  Now, follow my logic here: if you put meat directly on a grill’s surface, everyone knows you will get fat dripping on the jets, resulting in flair-ups.  I logically figured if I put my new chicken drumstick rack in the grill with the drumsticks suspended off of the actual grill’s surface, there would be no contact with the grill’s surface, thus no fat dripping onto the jets, thus no flair-ups.  See what I am saying: logic, baby, pure and simple Doctor Spok logic.   And you thought I was some sort of a dummy, which means you are either my high school guidance counselor or you are a 911 dispatcher.

Anyhow, I closed the lid, I went back into the house, and headed downstairs to work out.  FORTUNATELY, my wife and daughter were home, because in, oh, about five or six minutes, I could hear loud screaming (“FIRE!  FIRE!  FIRE!”) coming form upstairs.  I thought to myself, “I wonder why they are yelling FIRE?  What could possibly be on fire?  I better go check.”  So, I went upstairs and came face-to-fire with an inferno featuring my grill.   I quickly and calmly reacted by running around in circles, flailing my arms, and screaming “What do I do!?  What do I do!?  What do I do!?”  That’s when logic stepped in: STOP running around in circles and PUT out the (nasty word) fire!

Problem: I’m great at starting fires, but not so great at putting them out.  And the only thing I could come up with was to reach my hand behind the grill and turn off the propane knob by making sure to turn the knob in the correct “tightening” direction—to the left.  ONLY KIDDING!  Do I look like I work at Tiffy Tube?  Okay, I put in a resume.  I even wrote it in crayon, using cursive and everything, and I’m pretty sure I spelt my name right.  But I haven’t heard anything yet.  No news is good news, I always say.

So, anyway, I turned the knob to the right, and the propane shut off; however, fire has the nasty habit of burning things, to include my right arm, which brought along two more problems: 1) while on fire, the thoughtful and caring neighborhood kids got the great idea to come at me with marshmallows on sticks, jabbing them in my general direction, and oh sure it’s all fun and games trying to roast your marshmallow over Bill’s burning arm until someone jabs a stick into old Bill’s eyeball and then it won’t be so funny, will it, and 2) how do you look cool in front of the crowd of gathering neighbors?  All kidding aside, it is extremely difficult to look cool while driving a mini van or when attempting to extinguish an engulfed body part while in public.  And if you are EVER driving a mini van when your head is on fire you are really going to look like a major dork.

Well, luckily, I happened to remember something about putting a blanket over a fire to remove the oxygen and the fire would go out.  So, I reached into the house with my left not-on-fire arm, felt around, and grabbed what I believed was a blanket.  It turned out to be my wife’s new cashmere sweater, which produced YET another fire-related problem.

Happily, everything turned out okay.  The fire was put out; my grill was sold and the money was used for a down payment on a newer cashmere sweater; the vinyl siding melted into a remarkable image of Mother Mary holding what appears to be a grilled cheese sandwich containing the face of baby Jesus (which I am now selling on eBay for three hundred billion dollars and nine cents); the neighborhood kids had a marshmallow-toasting blast, and I have a cool pirate patch over my right eye.  Shiver me timbers!

Copyright © 2008 Bill Drury.  All Rights Reserved.

Bill Drury is a humor columnist for The Carriage Towne News.  Contact him via snail mail c/o The Carriage Towne News, P.O. Box 100, Kingston, NH 03848, or email him @ Drury1234@Verizon.Net, or to go his website @ www.billedrury.com.