Recipe for disaster

What’s your favorite recipe?

My mom’s high heels clicked on the floor as she and Pop entered the kitchen. Over in the family room, I lay sprawled on the couch watching TV, trying to look casual.

Mom pulled out her compact and gave a final touch-up to her makeup. She snapped it shut, put in in her purse, then looked at me.

She and Pop were going out with some friends for dinner. My older brother Doug, who usually babysat me, was on a date. So it had decided that at 11, I no longer needed a babysitter. I’d have the house to myself. I couldn’t wait.

Mom went over the rules for a third time. “So…no friends over. The phone number of the restaurant is on the fridge. You can have a snack. But DON’T USE the stove or oven. Got it?” Pop, in a leisure suit that Mom had made, look at me threateningly. His glasses made his eyes bug out a little.

“Got it,” I said as I got up to hug them goodbye. Mom wagged her finger in my face. “Don’t let us down,” she said.

This was way before the movie Risky Business where Tom Cruise does his famous underwear dance to “Old Time Rock and Roll,” but it was in that same spirit that I ran wild. I jumped up and down on the couch. I went into Doug’s room and snooped around his stuff, finding several things that belonged to me. I got out my trumpet and played with gusto as if I was on the 50-yard line at halftime; our dog lowered her ears and ran off.

I heard some faint shouting in the distance and looked out the sliding glass door. We lived in the country and our small neighborhood was located near a camp for migrant workers who picked seasonal crops. On Friday and Saturday nights, they had bonfires and boozy voices raised in song sometimes drifted our way if the wind was right. I could see a fire going.

Even though it had not been expressly forbidden, I knew better…but I thought a little protection was in order. I went into Mom and Pop’s bedroom and took down his .22 rifle. I loaded it with a few shells and carried it out to the family room, just in case.

Finally, I got it out of my system and settled down. It was 8:00 pm and the Brady Bunch was coming on. Ironically, it was the episode where Peter builds a volcano as a school project and it erupts all over Marcia and her snooty friends.

In between the closing credits and the beginning of The Partridge Family, I went into the kitchen for a snack. I didn’t feel like chips or space food sticks. Nothing in the refrigerator looked appealing. I opened another cabinet drawer and found a big jar of popcorn. Perfect!

I read the instructions; seemed easy enough. Add oil to a pan; dump in popcorn; turn on heat; add lid when kernels began popping. So even though Mom and Pop had barely been gone an hour, I was already breaking the cardinal rule. I figured I’d just thoroughly clean up and they’d never be the wiser. My own Garden of Eden and apple.

I got out Mom’s favorite Revere Ware pan. I put it on the stove, added an inch of cooking oil, then the popcorn. I turned the stove on high and went back into the family room to see what the Partridges were up to tonight.

I always had a thing for Susan Dey, who played Laurie Partridge. I was so busy watching her that I forgot all about my popcorn. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flicker. I looked over and saw and a solid orange tongue of flame rising from the pan. It rolled up oily, heavily…almost a living thing…into the fume hood and then beyond, toward the plastic drop ceiling that concealed the fluorescent lights. The opaque plastic panels nearest the fume hood were curling up from the heat.

I shouted, leaped up and ran into the kitchen. I grabbed the pan off the stove, holding it at arm’s length because of the intense heat of the flame. I ran around the kitchen in a panic, holding the pan while the flame reached almost to the drop ceiling. Panels curled up and fell out as I ran in frantic circles, not knowing what to do.

What I finally did do was the worst thing possible; I dumped the pan into the sink and turned on the cold tap.

A small explosion ensued. I put my arms up for protection as flaming globs of oil sprayed out landed on the countertops, Mom’s cookbooks and utensils, the floor. I ran around stomping and swatting at the flames with a dishtowel until they were all extinguished. Exhausted, chest heaving, I surveyed the damage.

A smoky pall filled the kitchen, the family room and the adjacent dining room. The harvest gold fume hood had scorch marks on it and the back burner still glowed red; in the chaos, I had forgotten to turn it off. About half of the drop-ceiling panels lay on the floor and the rest were blackened and curled up at the edges. Here and there on the Formica countertops and the linoleum floor, pitted holes had been burned. The bottom of mom’s favorite pot was blackened with the pattern of burned kernels.

As the Partridges sang their weekly tune, I sat numbly, my mind racing. Even Susan Dey was forgotten. A broken plate or cup, fine. A dent or scratch, OK. But this irreparable, wholesale carnage was so far off the charts, it was almost laughable. And not a funny ha-ha laugh; the insane cackling someone of someone being led to the gallows.

The Friday night TV shows droned on in the smoky stink; I finally drifted off halfway through Love, American Style.

In my dream, I was making out with the girl I had recently gone steady with for a month, Suzanne Bowers. “Oh, Darryl,” she said breathily as she leaned in for a kiss. “Oh, Darryl…” Someone was shaking me. Suzanne’s voice faded and was replaced with Mom’s. “Darryl! DARRYL!” she shouted. I shook my head and sat up. Pop was in the kitchen looking around with an expression I saw only that one time, and never wished to see again.

Mom glared at me. “You jackass!” she shouted. “What the hell happened here? And what’s this!?” She gingerly picked up the loaded .22 that was laying on the floor next to the couch. Two sets of eyes bored holes into my skull.

To say I was in the doghouse for the next few weeks would be failing to even hint at the wrathful, punitive storm that descended on me. No friends over. No TV. Bedtime an hour earlier. My meager bank account from doing chores pillaged to pay part of the repair costs. I was shunned, a pariah; even Doug and our dog kept a wary distance.

But eventually, like all things, it faded and became part of our family lore. The last time I heard it mentioned was at my wedding. Pop gave a speech and the popcorn incident was woven into his narrative. He finished and amid the applause and laughter, he winked at me.

It was the itch that was finally scratched.

Love you, too, Pop 🙂