UPDATE!! DAMN KIDS

Dear repeat reader,

I would like to apologise for my continued use of my weblog as an airing area for the stress developed from my continued co-habitation with two freshmen.

Sorry,
Kristen.




that said...

ONE OF THE KIDDIES NEARLY BURNED DOWN THE BUILDING TODAY.

Backtrack--2nd March 2006. My grown-up housemate and I had a good time making cake and brownies and buying beer for a birthday party for our co-worker today (3 March). We baked up everything and had it looking pretty, decorated it to read "Happy Birthday Nick" and put saran wrap over it to sit overnight.

I guess we failed to idiot-proof our confections because, like most academic housing, we don't have much yardage when it comes to countertops. We put the baked items on the stove (turned off) to wait overnight for the party today.

We didn't think a thing about it.

3rd March, 2006. I got up at 8, like normal, to go to class. I had a very long, brain-draining exam so when i got home, i set an alarm for 1:00 and crawled back into bed.

at 12:20 i was Rudely awoken by the piercing scream of the fire alarm. I found it odd, after the initial shock (it's several decibels beyond painfully loud) because it began ringing in my house, then the hallway siren went off. Confused (and mostly asleep) I stumbled out of bed and began putting on shoes.

Then i smelled it. That acrid, pungent, eye-watering smell of burning..something. Plastic, metal, food, hair--i didn't know what.

In my frustration at being awakened, and in further irritation at figuring out that it was someone in my house who had set the damn thing off, i made a hasty new rule for my household: "No more toaster priveleges for children."

I quickly pulled on some trousers and stepped out into the house. And saw it. A cloud of smoke that had filled the ceiling and had made its way to eye-level. And a pathetic child standing over the stove, soaking wet and wrapped in a towel, with a streak of soap suds on her cheek.

"I turned on the wrong burner. It was the wrong burner."

After wasting a couple of seconds stammering "What...the...hell?" I jumped over some chairs and quickly opened the windows in the common room. The smell was awful. Coupled with the eardrum-piercing noise and my eight-seconds-awake confusion the whole event progressed in still-frame panels, like a comic book depiction of an alleyway murder.

I remember telling the child to put a shirt on and get outside. The air was toxic and some residual lifeguard instinct told me I had to evacuate everyone. She nodded halfway and continued to stand, as though struck dumb.

The doorbell rang. The residence hall director stepped in to make sure we were all right. I said we were and the guilty party sneaked away to the bathroom while I grabbed some shoes and my keys. I returned to the hall to find the shower back on, the kid back in it, finishing what she was doing when she should have been keeping an eye on the burners. Flabberghasted, I exited the building.

The fire department arrived in the space of a few minutes. Or hours. I couldn't rightly tell as my brain was just then beginning to switch on and run some diagnostic tests. I stood for at least five minutes with my fly undone before i happened to glance down and notice my aquamarine-hued underwear glinting in the noonday sun. "Great," I thought. "Way to impress one's neighbors. Real smooth."

The child never left the building. I returned to the house after the firemen gave the all-clear to find the RHD waiting for me. Like this was my fault. After a brief conversation concerning the circumstances of the alarm and a scolding concerning the child's pet rodent in the common room, he wandered off, his conscience cleared of responsibility for the event.

After the door closed the child came out of her room and went to the stove. I got a clearer idea of what had transpired while i slept--she wanted to make hard-boiled eggs. The brownies and cake were on the stove, so rather than move these things from the stovetop, she just made space and put the (MY) pot, filled with water and eggs, on the down-right burner.

And turned on the up-left burner.

Mistaking down-right for up-right is completely understandable. It happens. You miss by an inch and turn on the burner behind or in front of the one you meant to. But missing down-right for up-left is almost impossible without spinning around with your head pressed against a baseball bat for thirty seconds while playing goofy golf. The right-burner knobs are on the right side of the stove. Likewise, the left-burner knobs are on the left side of the stove. Doesn't take a whole lot of brain power to understand the difference. But she turned on the burner that was under my pan of brownies.

Then--and this is the beautiful part--rather than stay a moment and watch to make sure everything is getting started properly, she apparently just trotted off to the shower before the burner even began to warm. So she was jarred from her activity by the fire alarm at just the same time as i was waking up.

She has claimed she will replace my 8" baking pan, which, needless to say, has been ruined. But on the whole, she doesn't seem particularly upset by this whole event. She came out of her room on the phone, talking and laughing about plans for the upcoming week. She continued boiling her eggs.

Everything in my house reeks. I have to get my comforter cleaned now--a long, boring process that i like to avoid when at all possible. My mildly-dirty laundry is now amazingly dirty. My 4 fabric wall hangings absorbed the smoke odor like freakin' cat litter. All the upholstered furniture in the living room smells. I'm sure the carpet will take its time airing out as well.

All because a child--who is expressly forbidden from living in my house but was granted housing here anyway--did a very moronic thing. Which is to be expected from children living in freshman dormitories--thats why freshman dorms don't have stoves, ovens, or anything else built in that the kiddies can hurt themselves on. This event proves the housing system's functionality--you put children in grown-up houses, they behave like children and break the grown-ups' things.

Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.