Me and the Cute Catastrophe (Sweet, Small Town Romantic Comedy in Good Grief, Idaho Book 1)

by Jessie Gussman

  You can smell it, but there's no flame.

  "Maybe you don't have the right technique, mom." My daughter is way too much like her father.

  So, yeah, I determine in my heart that THIS TIME the match is going to light.

  I press into the box, strike, and yeah. This time the match actually does light.

  It also breaks in two.

  I'm holding the larger, unlit end, while the smaller part with the flame flies off and lands...in my lap.

  My daughter leans over to blow it out, but she's laughing too hard and can't puff enough air to blow. I can feel the burning on my leg - my pants are on fire (not lying, lol) but I can't blow them out because her head's in my way. I can't really see the flame, but I can smell my pants burning, and, while I'm not really afraid exactly, I am a little uncomfortable, the kind of uncomfortable that stems from the fact that you can smell burning clothes and you know they're the ones you're wearing!

  Okay, I admit to feeling a little slice of panic, even though rationally I knew I was not going to burn to death sitting twenty feet from a toilet. (Let me just say here, when your clothes are on fire, putting them out with toilet water sounds like a perfectly logical thing any rational person would do. Please don't judge. : )

  My daughter is still laughing so hard she can't breathe, and I suppose only a few seconds have gone by, although, in my experience, when you're on fire, time slows to a crawl.

  So, I start brushing my leg with my hands (this is not the technique that I taught my children when we did the mandatory fire safety class in school every year, but I never took into consideration that my clothes would be burning while I wore them and my daughter wouldn't be able to stop laughing to blow me out or at least get out of my way so I could roll - having already been stopped and dropped since I was sitting on the floor - or at least get to the toilet). I had to improvise.

  So, yeah, it was a little warm on my fingers, but I did manage to reach around my kid's head, get the match brushed off to the floor, and to (after what felt like a VERY long time) pat my pants out (don't recommend this technique, but it did work).

  By this time, the small part of the match was mostly burned down and my daughter had enough breath to puff out what was left, with only a tiny burn hole in the carpet.

  Here I want to say that not all the burn holes you see in peoples' carpets are the result of cigarettes, which I had always assumed, but now know to be incorrect.

  Someone might have been attempting to show their daughter how (not) to light a candle.

  I don't really celebrate lent, but I decided maybe I should give up candles for lent. Or fire. Or both.

  Thanks so much for spending some time with me today.