Time Out In The Dunce Parenting Corner And My Love Hate Relationship With My Smoke Alarm

About a year ago we had a bit of a household ‘situation’ that was much funnier in hindsight when I came across some of the photographic evidence the other day. I thought it might be entertaining reading.

There are a few sounds which you just don’t want to hear when you’re in the shower and your almost-5-year-old-boy-of-mischief-and-somewhat-questionable-decision-making-processes is roaming free throughout the house.

The sound of screaming, theirs or others, is clearly at the top of the list. Similarly the sound of any pets in distress or desperately breaking their way out of the house to escape torture is probably a close second. The voices of strangers, police sirens and any sort of loud crashes all come to mind in various order following these.

For me on that morning, it was the shrill screeching of the smoke alarm that sent panic ridden shock-waves through me during the first hair lather. As I clambered out of the shower, hair still full of shampoo, a small and somewhat sheepish face appeared at the bathroom door.

“Mum...” was all it said.
“What have you done? Why is the smoke alarm going off? What did you do?” I was all accusations as I hustled him out of the bathroom toward the source of trouble and found that the house was full of smoke.

Sliding across the tiles in the kitchen, and I mean literally sliding, due to the fact that I was butt naked and dripping wet, the first thing I noticed was that the microwave was lit from within. This was cause enough for concern because it didn’t have a working light.

If that hadn’t been alarming enough, the fact that the entire area surrounding the microwave itself was black was sure to have done it. The state of the outside however was nothing compared to what was going on inside the appliance itself. I cautiously peered through the glass, worried about the possibilities of an explosion in my face, to find that a ball of flame was actually flying around on the inside of it.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I pride myself on the idea of being cool and calm in a crisis. But as it turns out, that is much more of an idea, an idea of bullshit, than an actual fact. I realized in the split second that I stood there trying to figure out what to do, that I had no idea what to do.

So I pressed the stop button. So far so good. Nothing exploded in my face. Eyebrows still intact. You know the other thing, besides the onset of panic, which makes it hard to think clearly, let alone coolly or calmly, in a crisis? The incessant, high pitched, eardrum shattering sound of not one, but two, smoke alarms going off in close quarters. It’s like your composure just begins to disintegrate under the harassment and you find yourself trying to think your way through a bowl of pudding-brain.

It’s fair to say there was a moment of confusion, which translated into a ridiculous display of me, still starkers, trying to dart in two directions at once, where I thought the first thing to do was stop the alarms. This was followed by a moment of clarity as I realized the fireball in the microwave was actually the greater issue. But..oh man that noise; but..agghhh...fire, fire, (which was made more absurd because I heard the words ‘fire, fire’ in my brain in the voice of Peppa Pig’s Miss Rabbit) ….at which point logic kicked in.

The fact that the voice of reason in my head is a cartoon rabbit with a severe case of workaholism and possible split-personality disorder is not lost on me!

'Don't worry Daddy Pig, I'll be right there.'

There’s that moment when you’re dealing with these situations in your home when all those lessons you learn when you’re a kid sort of go out the window for a minute. You know, the ones like, don’t stick a knife in the toaster and that sort of thing? So my first instinct was to throw water on the fire, but you obviously don’t throw water on an electrical fire, or a fire that’s still spinning around on the inside of a microwave.

What if I smother it with a tea towel, I thought? Maybe, but I could just as likely set fire to the tea towel and complicate the situation. So I went with the next idea and grabbed the still burning lump with tongs and threw it into a frypan on the stove and put a lid over it, where it quickly burned itself out. Hoorah. Deep breath. Shouldn’t have done that.

The fire was taken care of! But the house was still full of smoke and the alarm was still blaring. So naturally, I grabbed a tea-towel, because jumping up and down and waving a piece of cotton that is about 40x60cm in size is going to clear a house full of smoke. I switched to a blanket. The stupidity of the situation dawned on me, standing wet and naked in the middle of the lounge room flapping a quilted blanket made by my mother at the ceiling. So I climbed on a chair and stood on my tippy toes as I tried to press the button on the top of the smoke alarm that turns it off.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be what that button is for. Pressing it will do exactly: jack shit.

The thoughts that ran through my head while this was all happening. Oh my god, that noise, the neighbours are going to be calling 000, I’m going to be busted dancing naked in a cloud of smoke by a bunch of fire fighters who I won’t hear coming because of this friggen alarm, the dog is whining and running around looking for somewhere to hide, the smoke is combining with shampoo on the surface of my eyeballs, that bloody noise won’t stop and my son is cowering behind a pile of washing with a look of both fear and bewilderment on his face.

As much as I’d like to believe that these are the fire fighters who would turn up at my house, I know I’m just not that lucky!

At that point I did what any sane and slightly hysterical person would do and just ripped it out of the roof. That didn’t help AT ALL. It just meant the blaring noise was now coming from my hand rather than the roof. It had gotten closer to me. It was winning. I was losing my mind. THINK WOMAN!!!! What would Lagertha do? But I didn’t have a sword or an axe, not handily strapped to my hip at least. I smothered it in a towel. Slightly better. The battery! You have to take the f*&king battery out. AHHHAH!!! Oh sweet Jesus, the silence, oh..it was golden.

Just try me smoke detector. I dare you.

Back at the stove area, I inspected the cremated mystery object about the size of a grapefruit. It’s popcorn, my little love informs me. What the...? Do we even have popcorn?? Not anymore.

At this point, from the corner of my eye I caught the motion of my son taking a surreptitious bite of something hiding in his little hand and turning to find out what it was, I noticed for the first time, small smears of chocolate on his hands and face.
It would seem that while rummaging in the top of the pantry, which he got to by climbing on a chair and then up the pantry shelves, like he’s frikken Spider-Man, he had not only found a packet of popcorn I didn’t know we had, but a block of chocolate as well, and had eaten all but 6 and a half squares of it. While starting a fire in the kitchen. All before quarter to 9 in the morning.

Upon closer inspection of the microwave and some questioning I learned that he had actually taken the plastic wrapping off the package before he attempted to microwave it, but then placed the bag up the wrong way so that it wasn’t able to expand.
Then there was the fact that, in his words, he tried to cook it for 987654321 hours!

I don’t actually know how long that translates to in microwave years, but its long enough, minus the 44.00 or so minutes that I THINK, were left on the clock, to turn a packet of microwave popcorn into a flying ball of flame; shatter the glass plate; melt, burn, blister and/or scorch every surface on the inside of the microwave; warp and buckle the door so that it won’t close properly once opened and melt numerous items which were sitting on top of it.

The damage.

The clock still worked though so that was good news. If that’s all you wanted to use your microwave for. Which we didn’t!

He was very apologetic. For the next few hours he issued earnest little statements like, ‘Mummy I’m very sorry I broke the microwave,’ and, ‘I’m sorry Mum. I’m sorry for what I did to the microwave’ and hit me with big blue compunctious eyes and a crinkly wobbling little chin.

“I’m sorry I broke the microwave Mummy.”

The lessons – my son is a humble menace. He never sets out for chaos; it just seems to end up that way. I knew this one already but every now and then he generously issues a reminder that I need to stay on my toes. I wasn’t really angry so much as.. alarmed – (see what I did there). It was of course our own fault as we had been encouraging him to do things for himself more in the preparation for school the next year and he was at the age where he wanted to investigate his independence. Actually, he’s always been at that age now that I think about it.

Post-kitchen fire conversations revealed that the lesson of ‘age appropriate food preparation’ was now pretty clear in his mind. I was the only one spending time out in the Dunce Parenting corner. One minute per your age. That’s A LOT of minutes of reflection. I think it would have gone better with a glitter bottle.

The other lesson I learned was a pretty serious one. Smoke detectors. Pretty handy! We should all listen to that ad we hear on the radio once or twice a year but don’t pay any attention to, that tells us to change our smoke alarm battery when we change our clocks for daylight saving.

They are as painful as a punch in the face when they go off while you’re burning your toast, but they really could be the only thing standing between a small containable combustion, and something that can quickly become a much larger problem.

Got any stories of crazy crap your kids got up to that damn near burnt the house down? Please God, if you do share them in the comments so I can feel less alone in the dunce parenting corner.

Til next time, don't be an arsehat and always read the instructions on the popcorn packet.
Brooke