Posted on May 31, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Never Yell “Fire!” in a Crowded Oven

I had every intention of getting up Sunday morning and going to church for the first time in a long time (this is another one of those things, like taking donations to the Goodwill, is a Big Deal for me). But when my alarm went off I felt sick to my stomach and I was tired from not sleeping well the past couple of nights, so I rolled over and went back to sleep until 11 AM.

This is a post about what happens when you blow off church and God decides to toy with you.

I woke up and had some unpictured strawberries and cake and whipped cream. Which I almost stopped eating halfway through, because the insides of the strawberries were covered with a fine layer of mold. (Instead, I shoved those bits off to the side and ate the rest. Oh yes, I live dangerously. And if you know what’s really in the food you eat, you won’t blame me for being cavalier about a little mold. Like that’s the worst thing any of us have ever eaten…)

I spent the afternoon lazing around watching Mythbusters on Netflix, then around 4PM I got up to put dinner in the oven. Got a steak out of the freezer, cut up onions and potatoes, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and set it into the oven. Then turned around to get my carafe of Crystal Light out of the fridge. And what do I hear but the sound of electricity arcing (a sound that, thanks to those Mythbusters episodes I’ve been watching, I’m currently very familiar with), and as I turn around I see a brilliant light coming from the inside of my oven.

Now, I may occasionally be flaky, but several people have told me I’m someone they’d like to have around in an emergency, because for some reason I turn into this cool and level-headed person. So I very calmly set my carafe on the floor, turned the oven off, opened the door and noted that the back left part of the heating element was on fire (!), made a mental note that the fire extinguisher was right outside my front door if I needed it, then shut the door and stood there waiting for the fire to go out. Which, thanks to both my chemistry minor and my training in fire safety, I knew it most likely would. (no oxygen + no heat = no fire!)

Now the inside of my oven looks like this:

And the heating element looks like this:

You see that hole in the heating element and the white mark on the bottom of the oven? Yeah. Those weren’t there before. And I wonder, is this my burning bush? God’s way of saying, “Hey, I’m here, where are you…?”

I called the leasing office and told them that my oven! had! caught! on! fire! (hey, I said nothing about being calm after emergencies…) and they sent over a maintenance man who happened to be on site, who did not know how to operate my oven, and who said I must have dropped something on the element that made it catch fire. Until he tried to turn my oven back on “to make sure it doesn’t explode again” and discovered that the element was fried and wouldn’t heat. Then he said that sometimes they catch fire when they’re going out and told me that since it was Sunday evening and Monday is a holiday, I’d have to wait until tomorrow and then call the office and tell them to replace it.

At that point, I had a sudden dire need for some Diet Sunkist and some donut holes. Oh, and dinner. So I headed to the Teeter and got said items, plus a two-pack of rotisserie chicken legs and some Alexia potatoes to make on the rangetop (which still works).

I munched on some donut holes while I cooked and was sad to discover that they don’t taste the same as they used to. Before I could sit there and eat an entire box in one go, but now…eh. Something’s missing. It’s not you, Krispy Kreme, it’s me…

My dinner turned out to be tasty.

And blurry. Clearly I have not mastered the fine art of holding the camera in one hand and my plate in the other.

After dinner I needed to get out of my apartment–my heartrate and blood pressure both shot up courtesy of the flames shooting out of my oven and after I ate I could tell my pulse was still high, so I decided to take a short walk. Also, my apartment smells vaguely like burnt heating element and smoke. So I went for a walk, which inadvertently turned into a 5.5 mile walk because I took a wrong turn in a part of Stonehenge I’ve only been to once before and ended up having to walk a mile and a half or so farther than I intended.

But I still made it back before dark, which is always my ultimate goal, and my foot didn’t bother me much. I don’t consider this to be proof that it’s all better now, though, because it’s one thing to be able to walk 5 miles on it after I’ve been laying on the couch all day, and another to be able to walk 5 miles on it after a day at work.  But I’m optimistic that it’ll be okay tomorrow evening, and if we can’t rely on blind optimism, what can we rely on…?