Background: May 2002...My grandma, two aunts and cousins were in town for my sisiter's graduation. One evening a dominos game was going on and one of the houses down the road caught on fire. It ended up burning to the ground with a woman inside.
Fast Forward: Sunday night, July 2010...while playing dominos with the same people, the story of the burning house is brought up and comments are made about fires and playing dominos.
Fast Forward: Monday night, July 2010...I, Katie, am allowed to leave work early, excused, because our fire suppression system was not working correctly (it worked, just the announcement/warning to get out was broken). Since we could not be in the building (duh!), the company decides to give us the option to go home excused (no points given), unpaid (I am ok with this for 4 hours). I, of course, take the gift and go to my mom's since my whole family is there and my sister and her hubby will be leaving the next day. I surprise everyone (yay!) and we decide to play another rousing game of Mexican Train Dominos. My Aunt Patty was not feeling well so she decided not to play. We start the game at approximately 7:40 pm on the patio.
About 8:00, my Aunt Patty decides to go inside to watch TV with my Grandma, who is obviously not into Mexican Train Dominos. About 10 minutes later, we hear someone banging around in the "stove drawer". We give the "weird" glance but continue our game. About 5 minutes later, a bloodcurdling scream comes from the kitchen "KAAA-TTTHY!!!!" (For those of you that are not aware, that is my mother's name).
Well, from here all I can tell you is my side of the story. I look up and can see into the kitchen. All I see are flames and ALOT of smoke...I mean, we are talking like 50 cartons of Marlboros ALOT.
The first thing that pops into my little brain is, "Oh, there must be a fire! I should get some water to put it out." Good thinking, Kate. As everyone runs in to see what the problem is, I run over to where a 5 gallon bucket is sitting, full to the brim with water. My parents keep them for flower watering. I pick it up (adrenaline does some STRANGE things) and run into the house with it. In the process, I feel the need to tell my brother-in-law to turn on the hose (obviously, we have firefighting skills HA!)
When I get in the house, my mother is beating the burner with a tea towel trying to put out the fire. Everyone is screaming and yelling. My sister yells at me to not put water on the stove because it's an "electrical" fire. My dear husband, who many of you know, has never yelled at me EVER! We have been together 7 years and he has never YELLED at me. He is trying to get my mother's attention to ask her where the flour is. She is busy beating the burner so he finally gets her attention and YELLS, " WHERE IS THE FLOUR!!!!???" She goes about trying to get it while I reach over and turn the burner off...as if it matters at this point. She unrolls the bag of flour and starts pouring it on the burner. Can we say stinky? At this point, I have water all over myself, the kitchen floor and the living room floor. I decide to remove my bucket to the outdoors and may I just say that even though I lost about a quart of water on the way in, my bucket weighed quite a bit more on the way OUT the door. Funny how that works.
After the fire is completely out, we start the task of cleaning up. Apparently, my grandma had been looking for a pan to heat some water for her tea. Since she couldn't find the little pan my mom had laid out for her, she looks in the stove drawer for one (which we heard). She pulls out this item.
This is a plastic micro cooker...for the microwave! She fills it with water and puts it on HIGH! About 3 minutes later, this terrible scent goes rolling into the living room where my aunt just happened to be because she felt bad. She smelled it and went to go see what was wrong. Good thing! My grandma said she never even smelled it. After the cleanup was completed and we were still in the kitchen attempting to slow down hearts and mop up all the water (sheesh), my aunt says that we are no longer allowed to play dominos because everytime we do, there is a fire.
Fortunately, no one was hurt and the only items ruined were the plastic pot (obviously), a tea towel and the one burner. Too bad there was no video footage of this ordeal because I am pretty sure we could have made a killing.
Moral of the story: Don't be around (without a water hose) when the Knupp family is playing dominos!
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