So I’m not much of a cooker.

Single girl, living alone, I don’t need a lot of leftovers in the refrigerator judging me. But being single isn’t the only reason why I don’t do a lot of cooking. I have a pretty short attention span so I tend to forget about whatever is on or in the stove (smoke alarms are horrible cooking timers). As you can guess, I haven't always had the best luck at cooking.

My earliest cooking experience was in high school. I was cooking bacon and was getting really impatient.  Impatience seems to the key factor with most of my poor choices. So I turned the heat up to high (bad decision) and walked away, probably to do something important like watching reruns of Boy Meets World.

Shawn Hunter, what a dream boat

When I returned to the kitchen the bacon was a smoking pan of fire.

As one bad decision usually leads to another, I went screaming out of the kitchen. The only way I can explain this is by my overzealous Fight or Flight response, which for me is 90% flight and a pitiful 10% fight. But on a positive note, it’s the main reason why I’ve lived to the prime age of 24 and escaped natural selection so far (fingers crossed for another 24 years).

Anyway, my brother put out the fire while my mother fanned the smoke alarms. From then on I was banned from the kitchen.

My next cooking experiences came when I moved out of my parent’s house. As I’ve mentioned, I was living off campus in an apartment with a pretty nice kitchen. Oh yeah, and it had a really old gas stove. Welcome to irrational fear #2: Gas Stove.

Terrifying

I still remember my mom showing me how to light the burners. You just turn the knob over to light and then adjust the temperature. “It’s just that easy,” she said.

Just that easy? Oh really.

The first time lighting the burner I almost caught my eyebrows on fire. I kept turning the knob to light, but it never started. So giving it the ol’ college try, I kept turning the gas knob over and over and over, until finally the burner did light. The spark ignited the 2 minutes of gas I had been releasing and exploded with a giant burst flame. To make matters worse I had a pan on the burner which deflected the fire directly to my face. That demonic burner almost got me. 

From that day on, it seemed as though the stove was toying me. Lighting easily some days and stubbornly not lighting others. Then there were the days where it would light so quickly that the flame sparked 12- inches above the burner.

Even the ticking sound as it tried to light sounded demented, mocking me and my pathetic culinary skills, waiting for it’s chance to melt my face off. This stove was playing a deranged game of cat and mouse, and I was terrified of the day when I was bound to get caught. It looked a little something like this:

This is offensive to anyone who has a mustache

Fast forward to August 2010. I’m moving into my new apartment and as I looked around, to my horror, there stood a gas stove.

Unlike the old stove this one is shiny and relatively new. It’s also about half the size of my old gas stove. But it's size seems strange to me, almost child- like. And by child- like I mean the Satan child, Damien from The Omen.

That's not fruit punch

I really shouldn’t be so hard on this stove. It hasn’t once tried to catch my eyebrows on fire. And it lights within seconds, never toying with me but calmly sizzling to a low flame.

Got any weird birthmarks?

But I just can’t seem to get over my fear of it burning my face off.
I guess like all relationships, it'll take time.

     You may not know this but I have several irrational fears. Some of these fears stem from childhood events and others have been acquired more recently. No matter where these fears started they all have one thing in common... they are irrational.

    For example, during my undergrad in St. Louis, MO I lived in a really nice two bedroom apartment. One of the rooms was used as my bedroom and the other I used only for storage. The thing is, I was terrified of this spare bedroom. It had a creepy closet and the floors were really old so they were always groaning and creaking. Of course during the day time I never really thought about the spare bedroom, but at night? Well, at night was a different story. I swore to all of my friends that it was haunted. During this time I was watching a lot of Lifetime movies. Big mistake, it only contributed to my fear and allowed my very vivid imagination to run amok. In my mind something was lurking in the spare bedroom. Something along the lines of this:

 or this:
Why yes, that is the giant sand worm from the movie Tremors. (And yes, it does make me start thinking about Kevin Bacon.) I’m hoping I will soon outgrow my this fear because I don’t have room for a nanny come live with me. But for now... check out the Oracle of Bacon.