This Morning I Set Fire to my Oatmeal

It wasn't actually this bad.

My normal morning breakfast, cardiologist-approved, consists of half a cup of oatmeal flakes, a handful of raisins, and a pinch of sea salt, in a microwave-safe bowl, with the microwave set to run for three minutes. We're having a party tonight, happy new year to you, by the way, and I'm a little behind in my preparations. I was supposed to have made the pecan pies yesterday. So today I feel a little stressed, a little rattled. Harold needed the microwave for his bacon. He has to go to work on Saturdays. Hastily I popped my breakfast into the cooker, as my dad used to call it, punched the minute-button thrice and retired to the dining room to read the Times.

It was not very long before smoke and expressions of alarm came rolling out of the kitchen.

Flames were issuing from the microwave. The raisins were all on fire. What had I done? I'll tell you what. In my mad haste to get breakfast I forgot to add the water.

Harold blew the fire out, God love him. Eventually I summoned the nerve to pour a little water on the smoldering raisins. The dish did not crack. The bacon was able to be cooked. I fixed myself a bowl of dry cereal and retired to the dining room to eat it in shame. "What's wrong?" Harold said. "I set fire to my oatmeal," I said. "It's the beginning of the end. Dementia is upon me."

"No it isn't," he said. "You do that all the time."

"I do?"

"I seem to recall you burned a hole in a pot five years ago."

"Oh. Right."

"And what about the time we went out and left something on the stove that caught fire and Karen had to break into the back of the house and put it out."

"I don't remember that at all." Karen hasn't lived next door in something like twenty years.

"And what about that aluminum pot?" Yes, I melted the bottom right off an aluminum-clad pot. That I remember well. The melted aluminum took on a viscous quality like chewing gum. It was interesting, but I couldn't get it to go back on the pot.

"Relax," he said. "You're not getting any wiftier. Just stay in the kitchen with the pies. Take your computer in there."

So here I am. They'll be done in another half hour.