The water's on fire!

	The water's on fire!
Some People's Parents	Prev \| TOC \| More to come ...

I was working on a computer program at the time. I had run into a problem and chose to solve it with a technique I wasn't familiar with. I hadn't done much 'C' programming then, so I suspect it involved pointers. If you've programmed in 'C', you know that's a tricky part of the language. You have to put the right punctuation in the right place in the right order or your computer starts messing with its own brain and dies a temporary, but horrible death.

So, there I was, concentrating on this piece of technical arcana, and cooking supper at the same time. I was boiling water for pasta, and naturally put the lid on so it would come to a boil faster. And I 'knew' that the right way to cook pasta was to add a bit of oil to the water.

My son was closer to the stove than I was, at least that's my explanation why he was able to tell me what was going on with my cooking.

"Da-a-ad!", he yelled it with that long drawn out 'ah' sound that hits three different notes before the 'D'. "How long are you planning to let this water boil before you put something in it?"

I stopped typing in the middle of a line, and tried to hold that thought. I rushed upstairs, grabbed the lid with my left hand, measured the spaghetti and dumped it in with my right, took down the oil bottle with my right, unscrewed its top one handed, carefully measured two glugs into the pot, put the lid back in the oil bottle and put it away with my right hand, grabbed a wooden spoon and pushed the now flexible spaghetti around so it wouldn't stick to itself immediately, put the lid back on the pot and dashed back to my keyboard. I was good for 10 minutes, easy, until it was cooked.

Now, if you've cooked pasta you know the rule - "No lids." But this time, I didn't forget so much as I just put it down on the pot because it was still in my hand. You'll be expecting what happened next: "Da-a-ad!" Old faithful triple note. "The spaghetti's boiling over." There was no note of panic here. This was more the bored note of experience once again pointing out a parental error.

I saved my file and headed up the stairs from the basement. If you've had pasta boil over, you can anticipate the mess was really on the pot, not too much on the stove, and I'd need to take the lid off and stir it down for a minute, maybe turn down the heat to a notch below max. Not this time.

"Dad! The water's on fire!"

Old triple note disappeared, but again there was no note of panic in my son's voice, more delight at an unexpected, one might even say spectacular, change in routine.

I, on the other hand, jumped to it. This was a thorough surprise to me, and I did not know what to expect. I found a small area of bright orange flame under the pot on one side. I blew on it and it went out. Then I took the lid off the pot and stirred it down. It was definitely not cooked, and it wasn't even sticking. It was a bit lower on water than it should have been, but not a problem.

"Dad! It was great! The flames went all up the side of the pot! Too bad you missed it!"

I frowned at him as if he was the idiot, and tried to figure out why the water caught fire. Water used to boil over at our house every month or three. However, I was not used to having it catch fire, although there was the time that ... Never mind. Water does not catch fire by itself under normal kitchen conditions. The small amount of oil that comes out of a pot when it boils over is not normally enough to cause a fire. However, if the pot boils over for, let's say, half a minute straight or even a minute, the oil in it accumulates until there is enough oil under the pot to catch fire as the water boils away, and then you get a flare that can engulf the pot in a brief thrilling display of pyrotechnics. Fortunately, there was no washcloth or oven mitt close to the pot, or the pyrotechnics could have spread.

Naturally, I didn't go back to my computer until after supper that night.

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