Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation Read Online Free Page B

outward—onto stove, chiffon, and
     open flame.
    Hooray! And also Yikes!
    The fire flared up immediately. In seconds, it went from a tiny fire on the stove
     to a huge fire in the pot, and young as I was, I still knew this was a big fucking
     deal. Even then, I had the composure to think to myself, “You little asshole, you
     knew this could happen.” But I clung to confidence as I yanked the pot off the burner
     to the cold side of the stove, certain the fire would go out. Instead, it flared up
     higher. “Hm,” I thought. “That kills that theory.”
    Then I jumped back in fear, and freaked the fuck out.
    Now, I did know something like this could happen. I shouldn’t have been cooking when my mom
     was out. I definitely shouldn’t have been cooking food in scalding-hot oil. Indeed,
     as I suspected, I was a little asshole. But I had done it like a hundred times before, and nothing had
     ever gone wrong. I had a flawless track record up to that point.
    As a result, all I had learned about little kids, shoestring-cut potatoes, and scalding-hot
     oil was that if you put them all together, you got a French-fry filled, happy little
     kid. As far as I was concerned, the voice in my head—along with my mom’s admonishments
     and that idiotic bear on Saturday morning TV blathering about lit matches and forest
     fires—was totally full of shit. I was careful, and even more than that, I was smart,
     and I was special. I could break the rules, because I was better than everyone else.
    This would be the first time I learned that this was not true. It would not be the
     last.
    The fact that the stove was on fire was a shock. Stuff like this was supposed to happen
     to other people. Dumber people. People not dressed up so fancy, or so hellbent on
     their own satisfaction. But it was happening to me, and it forced me (after climbing down off the chair to frantically
     get some water, throw it on the fire, learn irrefutably that water does nothing to
     grease fires but aggravate them and terrify you, get out the fire extinguisher from
     under the stove, put out the grease fire, and cover half of the kitchen in a fine
     white layer of regret) to confront my heretofore deeply held faith in my own superiority.
    Reality is a bitter, bitter pill.
    One thing was certain. I was not going to get away with doing the dishes and hiding
     the evidence this time. Unless I could sift through the Yellow Pages 11 and find a house painter who could cover the damage before my mom came home for the
     low, low fee of my weekly allowance, I was screwed. There were burn marks on the stove
     hood. There was a discharged fire extinguisher lying limp on the grease-spattered
     kitchen linoleum. Worst of all, there were oil splatters on my mom’s favorite chiffon
     shirt. I was more than screwed. I was dead.
    And in it crept. The sneaking suspicion that maybe I didn’t have it all figured out. Maybe others had something to teach me. Maybe . . . just maybe . . .
     I still had a few things to learn. It seemed farfetched, but possible.
    I got in a hellstorm of trouble that night. An early (and painfully brief) moment
     of tearful relief on my mother’s part was followed by a reckoning not seen since in
     that household. Grounding. Restriction of television. General elimination of fun.
     There may have been cold gruel. It was a long time ago, and hazy, but I distinctly
     remember some kind of manual labor. And I took it all without complaint, because I
     had brought this on myself, and for once, I had learned my lesson. Never, ever, prepare
     fried foods in chiffon. 12
    My kitchen fire era came to a close that day. I never made that unique set of mistakes
     in that precise order again. And from that experience grew the first silvered glimmer
     of an overarching axiom that I have come to embrace lustily, after having proved it
     to myself (and others) hundreds—no thousands—of times in my life. Stark and egregious
     errors, the truly epic failures,