Burnt Pumpernickel

I'm accident-prone. All my friends would admit it, and hell, even casual readers of this blog know that if there's a discarded banana peel somewhere in the world, I will find a way to slip on it and hurt myself. In the past year, I've come close to amputating my own finger, fallen and nearly broken my bum, and experienced a litany of other, er, mishaps.

The most recent in what is becoming an increasingly alarming string of unfortunate events took place February 21st, 2010. The scene: my kitchen. The time: half past eleven. The players: a hot stove and a precariously dangling, quite flammable scarf.

I think you know what happened next. While cleaning my kitchen, I reached to return a bottle of olive oil to the cabinet immediately above my stove, upon which there was a pot of water up to boil. As I stretched my arm, I noticed a curious scent that had begun to fill the kitchen.

"Hm, it smells like roasted marshmallows in here," I idiotically thought to myself. After 20 seconds of thinking how much I loved smores, I realized that there were not, of course, any marshmallows roasting in my kitchen. In fact, the marshmallow was me, and I was on fire. Or more precisely, my scarf was.

I screamed and threw it to the floor, shaking as Mr. Hiar came running in to find me staring at the now ablaze pile of fabric. Thank heavens he had the good sense to stomp it out -- in my hysteria, I might have just let it completely turn to ash. Because I'm nothing if not a quick thinker.

"In the future," he said, eyes wide, "the standard procedure is to stop, drop and roll. Say it with me now. STOP. DROP. AND ROLL."

Once the flames were out, I was left with a now much less fashionable scarf and half an inch of singed hair, which I then had to snip off with a pair of scissors. At this rate, next week I'm going to accidentally stick my hand in the garbage disposal and flick the 'on' switch.

What's to blame for my dangerous lack of coordination and complete absence of scarf awareness? I'm a fairly well-composed person in professional settings, I can string sentences together pretty gosh darn well, and I've never been one to blurt out whatever's on my mind without thinking. Why then do I trip over chairs, spill sauce on white blouses and, oh I don't know, unintentionally set things on fire?

I don't have an answer, but it's quite clear some neurons in my brain are firing better than others. What's an accident-prone girl to do? The worst part of it all: I really liked that scarf.