A few weeks ago, Tyler took Lillian to Cub Scouts where they had a bonfire and cooked s'mores. Since then, Lillian has been very interested in fire and wants me to light candles all the time. For this week, I thought I'd tell about my most exciting fire experience.
During my second year of college, I started working on the prereqs for nursing school. Among these was Medical Microbiology, one of the hardest classes I've ever taken. In the first few weeks, because our professor wanted to turn us into germ freaks like herself, she made us take cultures of things around our houses. I cultured the light switches, cutting boards, my toothbrush, keyboard, and drinking water. The day we read the cultures was the scarriest day of my life; on that day was born a new germ freak. I went home and started scrubbing.
My roommate Vivian walked in right as I started on the light switches. "Can we set the shower on fire?" I asked. "Um, OK," she answered.
See, we read about a study they did where they were testing for germs in toilets and between tests, to sterilize the toilets, they lit them on fire with isopropyl alcohol. Our shower had been suffering from neglect and, as I recall, it was pretty big. I didn't want to have to scrub that whole thing down, so I thought if we could just light it on fire, I wouldn't have to scrub it.
And, as Vivian (or maybe Claire) told me once, they didn't know other people's moms didn't let them play with matches.
After a short trip to the store to pick up isopropyl alcohol and matches (Vivian told the checker not to worry and that we Weren't. Up. To. Anything.), we got home, splashed the alcohol around the shower and threw in a match.
In hindsight, we should have put the alcohol in a spritzer, because most of it just ran (on fire) down the drain. And, it didn't budge the grime in the shower.
2 comments:
These are always very entertaining. I kind of wish I had been your roommate in college.
Never believe an Ashby who says she's not up to anything.
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