Spontaneous Combustion

‘Twas the night before Christmas many moons ago and on top of the coffee table, not an object was stirring except for a wildly flickering jelly candle… and next to the flickering jelly candle rested an artificial flower arrangement. As the flame turbulently twittered in every which direction, my family lounged, reveling in each other’s company and the holiday spirit. I had assumed my official holiday position, sprawled by myself across the loveseat which visibly bore the punishment of years of insubordination to my mother’s injunction against “plopping”. My parents shared the couch, and my brother and sister each occupied a comfy white armchair. We were engaged in some edifying holiday family togetherness… I think we were reading Dickens or eating plum pudding or (most likely) reciting Christmas Vacation lines to each other when the small undulating blaze emanating from the jelly candle licked the very tip of the lowest fabric leaf of the artificial flower arrangement.

Initially, no one noticed the dueling flames dancing atop the coffee table, but after a few moments, my sister pointed at the six-inch conflagration in the middle of the living room and sputtered, “F-- f--f--.” Try as she might, she could not get “ire” to follow the “f”.

“What is it, honey?” my dad asked.

“F--f--f--,” she stammered, still pointing.

I injected myself into the conversation. “Um, Dad… the flowers are on f-“

I did not stutter. Before the “ire” could pass over my tongue and through my lips, my dad had jumped to his feet and yelled, “FIRE!!!” He immediately transitioned from holiday to survival mode, leapt from the couch and, in one heroic sweep, scooped the burning arrangement into his hands.

The fireplace was four feet away.

Unfortunately, he did not deposit the fire into the fireplace.

The front door, leading to our snow-covered front walkway was six feet away.

Unfortunately, he did not pitch the miniature inferno through the front door to our snow-covered walkway.

Instead, Dad ran. His goal had been to run through the living room, through the dining room, through the kitchen, and through the garage to the driveway wherein he would drop the burning flowers, compose himself, and determine his next course of action.

Unfortunately, his scheme did not go as planned.

As he ran, the flames spread across the surface of the decoration in his hand. He attempted to blow them out but his breath only encouraged the fiery expansion. He made it to the cusp of the kitchen when the flames began to burn his hands, at which point Dad’s Plan B took effect.

Plan B was to dropkick the plant the length of the kitchen to the garage door… and… actually, that’s where Plan B ended. There was no clear exit strategy. Which did not matter, because what seemed to Dad at the time of its inception an infallible course of action turned out to be quite fallible after all.

Arms outstretched toward the garage door, Dad held the glowing orb of flames before his face and dropped it like a punter preparing to send a football flying down the field. He kicked the basket. Instead of catapulting forward (the typical result of having been kicked in a forwardly direction) the basket wobbled up and over and behind his head, barely missing his hair. It landed five feet behind Dad, still in the living room, the flames now two or three feet high.

The smoke alarm finally recognized the potential disaster under its nose and began warning us of impending doom, when Plan C took effect. My sister, finally breaking free of her “F-- f-- f--” paralysis, yelled, “Fire! I’ll go get some water!” She ran to the kitchen, filled a Dixie cup with water, returned to the fire, splashed the water on a Dixie cup-sized satellite flame about eight inches from the main flame (which, thanks to Sister, was almost extinguished), then repeated as necessary, incrementally diminishing the magnitude of our indoor brush fire. Roused from our Christmas perches, Little Bro and I stood by watching, helpful only in the respect that we were not making the problem any worse. Dad stood by with his hands on his head. Black smoke began to fill the living room.

Where, you might ask, was my mother during these escapades? She was nowhere to be seen. We all assumed that she had grabbed her most precious possessions and hit the road, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Turns out, we were wrong: she was readying Plan D. She coolly returned to the room with an old blanket and draped it over the former faux flower arrangement and extinguished the fire by smothering it.

In the midst of the black intoxicating smoke and shrill detector siren, my dad fell to his knees in despair in the aftermath of our Griswoldesque holiday disaster. Before him was an incinerated patch of once white carpet and the remains of his favorite fake flowers. The living room furniture was subsequently rearranged to hide what resembled the last vestiges of an (sub)atomic disaster. Since this nightmare before Christmas, my family has traded their air freshening candles for fragrance oils, and “fire” is a four-letter word around the holidays.



For other death-defying fiery posts, click here or here.

Oh Cap'n! My Cap'n!

Dear Wife,

First, I would like to sincerely thank you for all of your hard work—your clothes laundering, dish washing, (really spicy) chili cooking, chocolate chip oatmeal cookie baking, dog-hair vacuuming, and grocery shopping. Your dedication to the smooth functioning of our household is very much appreciated and has not gone unnoticed.

There is something, however, I need to tell you. I am sorry to have to confront you in this venue, but I thought the blow might be softened if we were in the company of many anonymous and non-anonymous blog-reading friends.

There is one crucial fact of life that it is time for you to learn. I had hoped when we got married that your parents would have taught you, but I am prepared to take the helm of your educational development for this teaching moment. Sweet, dear, loving, warm, beautiful wife, there is something you need to know:

Peanut Butter Crunch is NOT the same as Cap’n Crunch.

Sure, they both have the Cap’n on the cereal box, but these two cereals are as fundamentally different as Rice Chex and Wheat Chex—two completely different animals. Cap’n Crunch consists of textured rectangular yellow bits of crisp sweetened corn goodness, while Peanut Butter Crunch bits are smooth, puffed spheres of peanut butter. I poured the cereal in the dark kitchen, and thus didn’t carefully inspect the packaging. Surely, you can imagine my surprise upon inserting that first spoonful into my mouth.

Listen, I don’t blame you for purchasing the wrong Crunch. If anything, I blame myself for assuming you knew the difference. I can certainly understand how such an error in judgment could befall a newbie Crunchaholic when confronted with the panoply of Crunches in the cereal aisle: Cap’n Crunch, Crunch Berries, Peanut Butter Crunch, Choco Crunch, Chocolatey Peanut Butter Crunch, and Christmas Crunch (not to mention the generic imitations). Your childhood was obviously a disadvantaged one, and I love you all the more for it. For my part, I commit to you that I will no longer take it for granted that you are as well-versed in the ins and outs of sugar cerealdom as I am when we write a shopping list.

Love forever,
Your husband


P.S. Please don’t return the Peanut Butter Crunch to the store. I’ll suffer through it.




* For an expansion upon this post's title, please click here.

At least I'll be caffeinated

I start a new job tomorrow.

Fortunately, the wife bought me a new coffee pot. Compared to our previous brewing machine, this one is sleeker, shinier, and futuristicker. I haven't read the instructions yet, but it may double as an mp3 player, protein gel transfer apparatus, or time machine--there are lots of shiny buttons.

Hopefully, I can forestall the occurrence of work-related mishaps so characteristic of my very existence at least until I've endeared myself to the new boss and batch of co-workers... I've found that endearment prior to mishappening makes the latter much less awkward (though perhaps less bloggable as well).

Here goes nothing.

Faux knee injury

Mike’s recent post about faking injury (“Ohhhhhhhhh, my ovaries!”)to avoid marathon training reminded me of a particular low point in my otherwise illustrious athletic career.

I was eleven years old and had never been skiing. My classmate, Scotty, told me that he had also never skied and convinced me that this was something we both needed to do. Brian, a friend of my parents, agreed to teach Scotty and me the fine art of gliding down snow-covered mountainsides on two narrow slabs made of whatever material it is snow skis are constructed.

And so it went. It wasn’t long into our skiing expedition, however, that I became aware of a few details that had direct and immediate bearing on the enjoyability of the trip:

1. Scotty lied. He’d been skiing his whole life. His ploy about being a novice was clearly a cover to land himself a ski trip.
2. My parents’ friend Brian was an impatient ski instructor who shouted curses every time I fell into the snow.
3. I fell into the snow. A lot.
4. I don’t like falling into snow.
   

As I struggled unsuccessfully to sustain a general sense of uprightness on one trip down one hill, Scotty breezed by me several times over. Up and down he went, shouting empty words of encouragement, each time he zipped past me usually in the act of falling or having just fallen. ”Great job!” or “Keep it up!” he’d yell just as I would wobble and crumple to the frigid wintry slush. Brian, my instructor, would bark obscenity-laced orders at me to get up, bend my knees, snowplow, don’t fall, use my poles, don’t use my poles. No matter what crude command he gave me, the result was the same: a highly unstable (physically and, before long, emotionally), overweight and uncoordinated middle-schooler with virtually no chance of ever achieving any measure of ski-slope competence.

I couldn’t even disembark the ski lift without collapsing. Whenever a chairlift I was riding would approach the top of the mountain, my heart raced and an oppressive sense of impending doom overtook my fragile, pubescent soul. At the appropriate moment, I’d propel myself forward from the seat, poles in arms waving wildly about, striving with every ounce of willpower to remain vertical. More times than not, I toppled to the ground, barely managing to crawl and wriggle clear of the trajectory of the next skier emerging form the chairlift, skis aimed at my head.

By midday, my entire body was caked in snow and I was chilled to the bone. And though my muscles were already sore, my body did not hurt as profoundly my ego. I felt humiliated every time Scotty or Brian zigged or zagged around the quivering mound that was my contorted body twisted around two skis.

I finally decided that I had had enough. As was my habit that day, I had fallen to the ground while attempting to negotiate a very gentle turn. Rather than fight the good fight and struggle (yet again) to my feet, I patiently lied in wait for Brian. When he was within earshot, I clutched of my left leg and shouted, “Ohhhhhhhhh, my knee!”

I heard him swear under his breath as he skidded to a halt by my side. And with one simple fib, my agony was over.

“I don’t know what happened,” I lied, “but I think I really hurt my knee.”

“I can tell by the way you’re holding it that you’re in some serious pain,” he incorrectly assessed my condition. My ruse was working.

“It—it hurts a lots,” I confirmed with crocodile tears. I had hoodwinked Brian. I began to suspect that subterfuge was my spiritual gift.

Before I knew it, the ski patrol snowmobile arrived, sled in tow. Brian and the patrolman delicately maneuvered my clumsy body onto the sled, careful not to further disturb my *injured* leg. For good measure, I winced as the two delicately straightened my leg. Positioned comfortably, I then enjoyed the smoothest downhill ride of the day—nay—of my skiing career. I rode past Scotty, who was practicing some fancy maneuvers far above neophyte skill level. He looked mildly concerned; I maintained my pained visage and waved meagerly.

Upon arriving at the ski medical facility, the onsite doctor gave me a brief looking over. I feared he would determine that I was not really hurt. The only thing that would be more embarrassing than to have utterly failed on skis would have been Brian and Scotty knowing that I faked a knee injury to prevent further utter ski failure. Fortunately, the good doctor did not (openly) doubt the veracity of my claims of intense, sharp knee pain but recommended that I see my family physician when I returned home. As I write this, in far retrospect, I cannot imagine that my sham injury was in fact unique. Surely, ski lodge medical practitioners encounter fraudulent skiers on a routine basis and have learned to tell them what they want to hear: No more skiing for you, Mister (or Missy).

After I had been transported to the lodge post-examination, I assured Brian that I would be okay and that what I wanted most was for him and Scotty was to enjoy the rest of the day. “Don’t worry about me,” I said feebly, limping to a comfortable chair in the corner. “I’ll just take it easy over here.” Indeed, the rest of my day was spent reclining by the massive lodge fireplace sipping hot cocoas. Whenever Brian or Scotty stopped by to check on me (which was rare), I rubbed my knee and adopted a sour countenance. I expressed what a crying shame I thought it was that I could not be out there any longer than I had been. “And I think I was just starting to get the hang of it,” I told Brian once.

I managed to maintain the deception for the entire day and car ride home. Scotty and Brian, as far as I could tell, did not detect my artifice or suspect fakery of any kind.

While I had bamboozled Brian and Scotty, however, karma was not so easily fooled. As it turned out, within two years of the phony injury of ‘91, I actually did suffer a debilitating knee injury, requiring major reparative surgery: I tore my medial collateral ligament. The surgeon believed that I was “born with” weak medial collateral ligaments and warned me that my other knee would likely require a similar operation by the time I turned 20 (I am currently 28, and my other knee is still in its original working condition). It is clear to me, however, that I was not “born with” weak knee ligaments, but rather was dealt a hefty dose of karmic retribution for my stratagem. Furthermore, I have been blessed with a loving, beautiful wife… whose favorite winter pastime is snow skiing.

I no longer practice the art of injury fabrication to evade activities in which I have no desire to participate. The pain of implementing and maintaining such schemes and the risk of embarrassment for having been found out far outweigh the unpleasantness experienced in most enterprises I’d like to avoid. Besides, right now, I’m finding it much easier to implement the “I have to work on my thesis” tack to dodge undesirable activities (read: home improvement projects). I don’t even have to fake a limp—I just need a computer on my lap.

I sure hope the wife hasn’t read this far… as I’m blogging, she’s under the misimpression that I’m currently working on my thesis.

Poll Results: Be it resolved...

Thank you to everyone who participated in the recent Land of Yajeev survey.

Readers were asked, "What is (are) your New Year Resolution(s)"?

Perhaps the results were unfairly skewed by the subject matter of a few of my recent posts, but the resolution most often selected was the classic: "Lose weight." I wish I could offer some helpful tips (other than the big 2: diet and exercise) for successful weight loss to the 40% of respondents who have so resolved. I'm afraid that any sure-fire weight-loss strategies I could propose would involve diet pills or limb removal, both of which should be approved by your personal physician.* I just hope that when you have succeeded in becoming lighter and fitter, you will remember all the good times we've had at the Land of Yajeev and you don't go off in search of a slimmer, sexier blogger.

33% of those surveyed resolved to "Visit the Land of Yajeev more often", and 25% hoped to "Comment at the Land of Yajeev more often." With readers' overwhelming commitment to become more involved in the blog, the Land of Yajeev may soon surpass the popularity of MySpace and Facebook. Before long, this site will be your hub for social networking, video sharing, scientific literature browsing, web searching, and instant messaging. Think of all the merchandising and ad revenues...

I'd like to think of this site as a sort of online support group for mishappers and recovering mishappers (such as the 33% of survey respondents who resolved to "Suffer fewer mishaps"). My blog is largely a repository for the mishaps I suffer. I write about my own misfortunes and misadventures so that others may learn from my experiences and avoid replicating the innumerable errors of my ways (for a highly abbreviated selection of yajeev misphaps, click here or here or here or here).

A third of my readers resolved to develop their critical thinking skills, hand-eye coodination, spatial reasoning, and patience in the coming year. That is, they resolved to "Play more video games".

Apparently, most survey respondents are satisfied with their smoking and television habits. Only one individual committed to "Quit smoking" (as far as resolutions go, it's an oldie but goodie). Similarly, just one person resolved to "Watch less tv", and nobody opted to"Watch more tv" in the coming year (which is shocking, considering the recent premiere of The Moment of Truth).

Good luck to all who have resolved, especially those who have resolved to visit and comment at the Land of Yajeev more often.



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* This website is for educational purposes only. Information found within should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical conditions.