Home Ec Never Prepared Me for This One

I think when you buy your first house, you should automatically receive an Operating Manual for Grown-Up Life. (Perhaps subtitled: Congratulations, You Own a Home! Here's how not to kill yourself in it, accidentally, in the first few years.)

It should contain all those tidbits that we are somehow expected to glean over the years. You know, the "commons sense" things like that you should never EVER mix bleach and ammonia together in an effort to concoct your own more powerful shower cleanser. You shouldn't repair the kitchen sink disposal without turning off the power first. You should know that water will spread rather than douse a grease-based fire (read: most any kitchen fire), and that baking soda is the only safe way to smother such a fire. And that you should always use separate cutting boards for your salad tomatoes and your raw chicken. And so on.

And it should contain a short but important section, emblazoned with high red WARNING letters, spelling out some basic facts about the gas grill that is located out on your deck.

Such as, for example, that if you carry a platter of sausages out there to grill during a party, and you have been assured by someone else that the grill has been pre-heating, and you smell gas...you should proceed with caution.

You should NOT, hypothetically, open the grill, quickly note that none of the four burners is actually lit, immediately see the obvious fact that the burners have been turned on but the pilot has blown out, and then promptly push the starter button.

Because, you will have undoubtedly assessed the situation very quickly (being the possesor you no doubt are of a gas stove, and therefore wise to the ways of the finicky pilot light). VERY quickly.

So quickly, in fact, that when you do press the starter button to light the pilot, all the gas that has been building up under the closed hood of the grill for the past fifteen minutes or so will have had nowhere near enough time to dissipate, and therefore the little spark that normally ignites the lighter burner will in fact ignite a stunning fireball the size of your entire grill.

And the fireball will rush up towards your face and singe the hairs completely off your upper arms, and turn your eyelashes into eyelash stubs, and produce a frizzle of mane around your face, and scare the speech right out of you.

And hours later you will break down in tears (after washing a lot of burned hair down the sink with gallons of cold water, and then spending the rest of the evening trying to calm yourself) because if you had been just a few inches closer, or one of the children had been standing next to you, or the flame had traveled back along the line towards the full tank of fuel under the grill, or... you can't even put it into words...

The warning page should remind you that gas building up in a small closed space for tens of minutes is not quite the same thing as gas slowly hissing from a momentarily unlit burner on your indoor stove, and thus should be dealt with differently. It should spell out in no uncertain terms that the default move of lighting the pilot as quickly as possible so as to shortcut the emergence of unlit gas is precisely the wrong move to take with a large gas grill that has been "on" for a while.

Perhaps it should tell you, in very teeny tiny letters that you will be fine even if you are not smart enough to think through the obvious implications of lighting the burner as quickly as possible. But I'm not sure.

Personally, I think that the more utterly terrifying the description is, the better.

It might make you think more slowly in an emergency.

Because sometimes, in an emergency, your instincts can be dangerously wrong.

(And yes, I'm physically fine. My eyelashes will, according to Dr. Google, take up to 3 months to look normal again. That is small potatoes compared to what could have happened.)