Susan loves the oven in our new house. It’s a convection oven — two ovens, actually (or dual ovens; whatever), with digital controls and more bells and whistles than I’ve ever seen on an oven. According to Susan, it’s the best oven we’ve ever owned. Also according to Susan, the worst oven we ever owned was the one that exploded and blew off her eyebrows.
This story took place in the spring of 1996. I know it was spring because I was watching the NBA finals, and I know it was 1996 because that was the only spring we lived in El Reno, Oklahoma. Susan and I bought a house that was more than 100 years old, and while the appliances that came with the house weren’t quite that old, they were still pretty janky. Some worked, some didn’t, but more annoying (and perhaps disturbing) than that was the constant smell of natural gas that filled the kitchen. Every single day we were pretty sure the house was going to explode, but for some reason it never did.
(A few years ago, Susan, the kids and I took a cross-country road trip in an RV. Ten minutes into the trip, the carbon monoxide detector inside the RV started going off. I reset it. Ten minutes later, it went off again. I reset it, again. As Susan read the manual and tried to get someone from the RV company on the phone, it was my job to reset the darn thing every ten minutes. At three in the morning, I pulled the fuse, cracked open the windows, and went to sleep, hedging my bet that the detector was faulty and that we wouldn’t die in our sleep. That’s a lot like how it was living in an old house that constantly smelled like natural gas. When the smell got too strong we opened the windows, and each night when we crawled into bed we would cross our fingers and hope that if the house actually blew up, it would happen while we were at work.)
Anyway, 1996. In the early 1990s, the Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan, were an unbeatable force that won back-to-back-to-back championships in 1991, 1992, and 1993. With little else to achieve in basketball, Michael Jordan abruptly retired from professional basketball and joined a minor league baseball team. Then, in 1995, Michael Jordan came out of retirement, rejoined the Bulls, and led his team to a (then) record 72 win season. Michael Jordan was unstoppable — one man, leading a group of mostly new teammates straight to the playoffs. It was amazing to watch, not just to fans of the Chicago Bulls (which after three championships was 2/3 of the country) but to all fans of the sport.
Moths are attracted to artificial lights at night because of something called transverse orientation. Porch lights muck up their internal navigation system and cause them to fly around wildly. It’s the same thing that causes non-sports fans to feel the need to stand between sports fans and their televisions when really important things are happening, like Michael Jordan putting up 30 points against the Seattle SuperSonics during a playoff game. (This same phenomenon caused my daughter to tell me how her day went for the first time in 13 years during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.)
Sorry. 1996. After trying to engage me in conversation during Michael Jordan’s historic comeback from retirement, Susan finally gave up, left the room, and decided to go make dinner.
The oven we own today, in 2019, has an advanced digital system that pre-heats the oven, cooks your food according to the timer, and then drops the temperature down when it’s done, keeping your food warm until you remove it. The oven we owned in 1996 was not as advanced. It didn’t even have an electric starter. It came with a metal rod designed to hold a matchstick — the idea being, a person would turn on the gas, and then immediately light the gas line inside the oven using a lit match attached to a stick. Come to think of it, this really sounds like something Tweety Bird would talk Sylvester into doing.
So we’re in the fourth quarter. I’m on the edge of my seat. Jordan fakes right, goes left, and then tosses up an alley-oop to Dennis Rodman who is hovering above the rim. Right before The Worm smashes it through the hoop, from the kitchen, I hear a “boom.”
Not a “boom.”
“BOOOOOM!”
The blast sounded like a shotgun firing in the next room. If this had been a cartoon, the roof would have popped off the top of the house and the walls would have flexed out while the word “BOOM” flashed across the screen. My immediate thought was that it had finally happened — the kitchen had finally exploded. The building gas had finally reached its breaking point. I was just about to go see what happened when Susan came around the corner in a daze.
The first thing I noticed was that she was walking slowly, like a zombie. Her eyes were wide open, as if she were in shock. Her bangs were standing straight up in the air. And then I noticed that her eyebrows were missing. Literally, blown right off her face. She looked like Elmer Fudd after Bugs Bunny plugged the end of his shotgun with his finger.
Later, Susan told me she had turned on the gas to the oven and got sidetracked, allowing the gas inside the oven to build up. With all the other gas leaks in that house, it’s a wonder the whole place didn’t blow itself sky high.
You would think we would have replaced the oven, or at least called someone to take a look at the gas leak, but… nope. We were 22 years old and invincible. In fact, we went right on using that same oven for four more months, until I landed a job in Spokane, Washington, and we moved.
But, most importantly…
Most importantly WHAT????