Facing the Fire

Betcha thought this was going to be about facing a difficult moral situation, didn't ya? :-)

Well, in a way, it is. I'm facing my demon, my fear - of fire.

I have decided I'm going to eat much healthier than I have been, and to try to save as money as I can doing so. Which means I'll have to cook on our gas stove. For the first time since I moved in with my roommate, which was over a year ago.

I'm not sure when my fear of fire began or what to call it: aversion, phobia? But fire's always been a source of...awe and apprehension for me. I can remember looking at a picture when I was little - it was a group of people who were standing behind a fire in the foreground. One of the women in the group was crouched down with her hand dangling towards the ground. You could see her hand through the fire. Being little and not knowing about backgrounds/foregrounds and how photography can trick the eye, I distinctly remember thinking - the memory has stayed with me ever since, "Her hand is in the fire! Her hand is IN THE FIRE!!!! And she's not even CRYING!!!"

Since then, I actually have cooked on a gas stove. One fateful day I happened to be using oil, apparently, and it must have spilled outside the pan. All of a sudden, WHOOSH! went a huge 'ol flame right up in front of me. Scarred, I was - inside, that is. Traumatized, I was - outside, that is, as I screamed, turned off the flame, ran to my room and flopped on my bed. And then checked my eyebrows.

Being trapped in a burning car is one of my greatest fears. Every time I pass a smoking car on the side of the road I start to hyperventilate. Every time I get gas I always have a tiny suspicion that some gas will leak and somehow...someway I'll end up charcoal in two seconds. I was once in a bad car accident in Miami with my brother and cousins in which we were rammed in the back (goodbye, trunk!) by a hit-and-run driver. After the initial shock, I immediately began exclaiming, "We've got to get out of here! We've got to get out! The car's going to blow up!!!" Only my cousin Jacqueline's cry of "Allen [my brother], you're bleeding!" woke me out of my panic.

I think what really sealed it in, however, was watching a nightclub in Rhode Island burn down (the result of an ill-conceived pyrotechnic display gone horribly awry) with tons of people in it; people trying to get out; people running out; the flames engulfing the ill-fated small building. That was right before I moved out to California. And I've never forgotten it.

Even with all of this, however, I suspect that my fear provides a good cover for some laziness on my part. If I'm afraid of the stove, well, then, there's the microwave! And easy-to-prepare foods! I wonder if that particular foible's attempt at self-preservation has somehow fed my fire freakishness. Ah, the human mind. Ah, MY human mind.

So! Right now I'm trying to figure out how to do this. How to not freeze up at the sight of the stove controls, hyperventilate and tear up when the flame comes on and actually cook something on that damn contraption!

And, finally, how to do all of that and still keep my eyebrows.