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Yesterday was a heck of a day. One minute I was standing there half asleep, drying my hair with my ancient but familiar hairdryer, and two seconds later there was a pop, a bang, a flash, and flames.
Big flames.
Flaming flames.
The kind you see in movies.
As quick as you can spell Rumplestiltzkin – or at least say it – I had screamed, jumped in the air, thrown my hairdryer into the dry sink, and yanked the cord out of the wall.
It was an exciting moment. Not as exciting as the time I caught the house on fire trying to rid it of a huge wolf spider, but close.
Oddly, the flash fire moment stayed with me all day; not because it was so frightening, though it was, but because during the entire Dryer-On-Fire-And-I-Must-Act-Or-Die Episode, my life didn’t flash in front of my eyes.
Not a single scene.
Nor did I see the faces of my loved ones.
Instead I thought, “I really MUST stop eating gluten.”
I don’t know why I thought that. I mean, yes, I’ve been cutting back on my gluten intake for a while, but I’m not a raging fanatic about it. I suppose thinking about gluten is better than the cliched “If I die now, I hope I’m wearing clean underwear” thought, but not by much.
Personally, I’m a bit disappointed in my subconscious. I mean, is THAT how I’ll deal with The Final Big Moment? With nervous worries about gluten?
When on the verge of drowning during a family outing, will I pause to quickly count my caloric intake for the day and wish I’d eaten one less piece of pie? On an icy day, as my car flies through the barrier of a mile-high bridge, will I be inside my car absently wondering if probiotic yogurt is as good as Jamie Lee Curtis says it is? As I fall over a cliff to my death during a hiking trip gone sadly awry, will I be wondering about the cancer causing properties of various artificial sweeteners and how I really should stop drinking Diet Coke but hey, it’s just so darn tasty?
Is THAT what my life is all about?
No, it’s not. In fact, I refuse to allow it to be so. So today I made a resolution that the next time I face a fiery hairdryer, I’m going to make sure I have my subconscious under CONTROL. Instead of vaguely wondering to myself how much fiber was in my breakfast bran muffin, I want to say something meaningful. Something that will be remembered.
I want to be remembered for my last words like musician George Harrison who murmured “Love one another.” before he passed on, or L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, who managed to get off a quick “Now I can cross the shifting sands.”
Sadly, the chances are higher that I’ll be like poet Oscar Wilde who muttered on his death bed, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” Or Dutch Shultz, the gangster who, dying from a gunshot wound while a police stenographer dutifully recorded his last words, managed to rumble out a line of nonsensical items including, “French Canadian bean soup!” Or perhaps I’ll be like Aussie wildlife handler, Steve Irwin, who was fatally pierced by a stingray spine right after he said, “Don’t worry, they usually don’t swim backwards.”
Ah, famous last words! If you could plan your final words today, what would you like them to be? And have you ever had a hairdryer catch on fire while in your hand? Did you think about gluten, too?
Actually, I never had a hair dryer catch on fire, but I did have a flat iron explode in my hand once. I was so…. baffled, I don’t remember thinking anything at all.
If I could plan my last words… I’m hardly creative or thoughtful in that sense. But I guess that if someone else was listening, they’d be for Maya (baby sister). My world kind of ridiculously revolves around her lately. I know.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 6:30 am.
Aw, B, that’s a great way to be. Hugs to lucky little Maya!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:00 am.
I hope my last words reflect my life’s motto “good enough”.
Gluten? That’s sad. Hope you can get control of your subconscious.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 7:15 am.
I hope I can control it, too. It’s depressing to think it might be that uninspiring.
I like your motto, by the way. Much catchier than ‘gluten.’
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:02 am.
ACK! Bad Hair Dryer. If I had had one do that to me I’d be thinking “so what if natural drying makes my hair look likme a marigold…I’m good with that.”
What would I like my last words to be?
“Dang, it’s true, sex with Jackman IS so good it’ll kill ya.”
or the more realistic:
“Take this down, I’m about to be brilliant…” and then die. Cuz always keep them wondering.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 7:42 am.
Pesky, so you plan on dying while in the clutches of a ‘really good dream,’ hm? Interesting …
Heh! Actually, those are both darn good last lines. I’m jealous!!!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:03 am.
I hope that my last words revolve around my family, cats and books. I honestly haven’t had anything explode in my hands. I don’t think of gluten at all.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 7:53 am.
Kelly, I didn’t know that I thought about gluten that much, either. Now, I wonder . . .
Those are some good ‘last word’ topics, though. Very thorough.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:05 am.
The way I see it, it could be a lot worse. I could be talking about the upcoming zombie apocalypse and how we are all doomed unless we arm ourselves with books and cats. I guess that kind of fits with that slightly nutty cat lady thing I have going at the moment. Also the wolf spider incident reminds me of a huntsman spider incident that I went through several years ago. It involved me, a toilet, a dead spider and flash backs to Arachnaphobia.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:40 am.
Lol! I just asked someone to make me a coffee coozy that says Zombie Serum. If anything can get me through the Zombie Apocalypse, it’ll be java.
I don’t know what a Huntsman Spider is and I seriously don’t want to know, although I DO want to hear your story. Spill, sister!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:01 pm.
Okay, this happened about a month before the incident with Acheron and the live spider. I went to do my morning pee and flipped up the toilet lid only to see a dead huntsman spider IN the toilet. I freaked and had a flashback to the scene in Arachnaphobia where the mutant spider is crawling on the toilet seat. I had to close the toilet lid and flush before I could sit since I didn’t want a dead spider looking at my bits as I did my business.
Huntsman spiders are brown/black in coloration, non-poisonous, similar in shape to a wolf spider I guess and can grow to the size of a person’s palm of their hand. They are also freaky looking and like any other member of the spider family, able to make me have kittens when I come too close to them.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 5:05 pm.
Nothing from me… but I do want to hear the story about the house fire and wolf spider…
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 8:23 am.
CateS, yes ma’am! It’ll be another blog for another day.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:06 am.
yeah.. me, too. I am all about new techniques for killing spiders – house fire? Justifiable collateral damage if it will get rid of the eight legged scary thing.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:52 am.
Sheridan, exactly. One must do what one must do.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:01 pm.
If I could plan my last words, they would be something moving for my family. However, I will probably be one of those who mumbles something that doesn’t make one bit of sense.
I haven’t had a hair dryer catch fire in my hand, but I did have an airbag go off on me, and I thought I was on fire. I had a minor fender bender during which my air bag went off. It kind of knocked me for a bit of a loop, and my first thought was that I needed to get out of the car because I was on fire. There was so much smoke and the smell was burning my nose and eyes. In my mind I was going to burn to death in my car. I don’t remember having any thoughts, other then how to get out of the car. At the time, I didn’t find it very funny, but when I look back now, I laugh at myself because there was no fire, and I am sure I looked like a crazy women trying to get out of the car.
No gluten thoughts here.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 8:38 am.
AmyS, they do set off a good bit of smoke when they go, don’t they? I can totally see myself thinking “FIRE! RUN!”, too. Glad you are ok!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:07 am.
I liked Steve Jobs’ last word: Wow.
I hope my last words are something similar.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:02 am.
Barbara, dying or not, I’d say wow, too, if I had the meds he did. I might even go for the elongated ‘wooooooooow.’
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:08 am.
I have never had an appliance catch fire, but saw flames come out of an electrical outlet in an old house I lived in. Needless to say, some repairs had to be made right away.
Karen, how frightening! I can’t imagine what my last thoughts would be. I’d probably be worried about what I was wearing and how people were going to find my body.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:03 am.
Julia, I was a bit surprised that my mom’s ‘clean and neat underwear in case of an accident’ conditioning didn’t kick in, too. But nope. Just gluten.
I have a sad, plain, boring subconscious.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:09 am.
I’d like my last words to be, “Wow, I’m old.”
I have not had a hair dryer, or anything else, catch fire on me. I hope I don’t.
I don’t think of gluten. More along the lines of Julia’s thoughts about who will find me and how embarrassing that will be, although I’ll be past caring, won’t I?
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:12 am.
Lol! I wouldn’t mind those being my last words, either. Anything but ‘Fiber is good for your colon.’ At that point, I’d feel like a failure as a fiction writer.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:02 pm.
Hair-dryer fire? That’s a lot of flames really close to your head! Eek! Your post is incredibly ironic to me today. Four years ago today (in about a half hour), my dad passed away. He had good last words. He said “I love you”. The perfect ones.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:31 am.
Haley, absolutely perfect words. Every. Last. One.
Sending you many, many hugs!!!!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:03 pm.
My last words will probably be “where are my glasses?” Seems like that’s all I say anymore.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:42 am.
Glasses are important. I would be lost without mine. Have you thought about investing in one of those chains that your glasses can be hooked on? There are some sexy ones out there, you just need to look a bit.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:20 am.
Lord, I hope you won’t need glasses to head toward that white light. That would be cruel.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 1:06 pm.
Thanks for the laugh Fresh. And Kelly, I am still in denial about my old lady eyes. I don’t know if I can handle an old lady glasses chain like my teachers had in school
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 1:27 pm.
With prescriptions for distance computer and reading I can so relate to this.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 1:59 pm.
I have been looking for mine all morning. I had them last night, too, but now they’re gone. Grrrr!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:04 pm.
I truly hope my last words will be technically not be words, but a snore or sigh as I drift in my sleep.
More than likely, it will be something to my family to take care of each other for me.
I have not had a hair dryer catch on fire, but I have had a couple that smelled like they were going to, so I quickly turned them off and, after they’d cooled, threw them away. Fire is one of those things that I have an irrational fear of most of the time. I’m not a big camp fire person, although I love my gas stove and I like a fire place. I’m just entirely too graceful, so I always worry that I’ll trip and fall into the fire.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:57 am.
Julie, you worry that you’ll fall into the fire? I’m so glad that’s never happened to you! But you know what, I’m a bit clutzey, too, so I can understand worrying about that.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:05 pm.
Girl, if there is a pot hole within a mile radius I will find it and I will fall…
My dance teacher always found it sadly funny that I could dance all over the floor and she didn’t have a worry in the world, but she didn’t trust me to walk across the parking lot. LOL
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 5:30 pm.
Lol! I do love i-ron-y.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 8:26 pm.
Never had the hair dryer fire, you are in a class of your own there Karen.I did singe my eyebrows and hairline once by overdoing the starter fluid on charcoal, I use a gas grill now.
Can’t honestly say I give gluten a thought other than taking it out of things jacks the price up by half.
Last words, I got nothin’.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:46 am.
eviqn, that must have been SOME flash fire. OW!!!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:05 pm.
Learned very quickly not to do a couple of things 1: Do not keep loading charcoal with fluid.2:Do not cover Weber Kettle with lid for 20 minutes and then take it off without venting first.
Instead of the peach-fuzz that usually covers everyone’s body I had ash on my face and arms,I really hated losing the eyebrows they never came back properly.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 4:07 pm.
I’m just glad you’re ok!!! Wow. How horrifying.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 8:25 pm.
It happened so fast I didn’t have time to get scared. But I was not sorry to trade the charcoal grill for a gas grill, they are easier to control.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:17 pm.
I never think about gluten. What is it?
I have never had a hair dryer catch fire, BUT I have had one smell funny, like, “Is something burning?” funny. I got a new hair dryer that same day.
You may be unimpressed with your last words, but I’m impressed by your quick reactions. Toss, unplug, run from the scene—what else is there? You reacted BRILLIANTLY.
Last words . . . my favorite is what Oscar Wilde said, because I can see myself saying or thinking something very similar. Lying on my deathbed, looking up at . . . that dusty ceiling fan and being annoyed that I’m dying under a dusty ceiling fan.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:56 am.
Gluten is what makes wheat have the texture we like. It’s also bad for making your middle pouchy.
Oscar Wilde’s final lines were pretty good, weren’t they? I hope I can be as witty then, too.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:07 pm.
Oh, well, whew. I don’t eat wheat so I’m already gluten free! And I didn’t even know it!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:33 pm.
No hairdryers catching fire here, though I had one start to smell like it was thinking about it, so I tossed it.
I would probably think “Wow, I should have cleaned up the place” or “So many adventures I still have to take”
You know, I don’t think of gluten at really any moment, so I am hoping I won’t all of a sudden decide to ponder it in my final moments.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:58 am.
I don’t know why I pondered it, either. The whole thing is odd.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:07 pm.
I have had hair dryers do that to me, Karen! I think they have a shelf life, and when it is up they explode into flames.
I hope my last words are clever like Oscar Wilde’s. More likely it will be something like “Well, darn, I really AM mortal.”
And why should we be cutting down on gluten if we do not have an intolerance to it? What have I missed? Make that, what ELSE have I missed?
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 11:35 am.
Madeline, some people say that gluten can make you gain weight, but that’s a disputed fact.
Btw, “Well, darn, I really AM mortal.” is a perfect final line. I need to find one and start practicing it so that I’m ready.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:19 pm.
I hope I do as Capt. James Tiberius Kirk did (will do), who, catching a glimpse of the Great Adventure That Lies Beyond, said (will say), “Oh my.”
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 12:39 pm.
That’s a good one, Carol! It’s short (which is good since you’ll probably be short of breath), and pithy, and yet memorable. I like!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:20 pm.
I’d love for my last words to be mysterious, something like “I buried it in the field” or “The map is in The Taming of the Scottish Princess” or “I delivered his love child.” That would be so fun!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 1:01 pm.
Molly, PLEASE use my book to hide a treasure map! It would be so fitting!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:20 pm.
Once I put an oven mitt on a stove burner that had been on, and the mitt caught fire. I was standing next to my sister when she the bread she put in the microwave caught fire because she had left the metal twist tie. It makes a pretty incredible popping noise before the fire starts. It was awesome.
I think my final last words would be to my kids. I think I’d tell them to be true to themselves like I’ve raised them.
As for gluten – don’t eat it if you have celiac’s disease, and don’t go gluten free if you don’t have celiac’s disease. All that gluten free food is really junk food once you read the labels. I’ve had friends gain weight when they removed gluten from their diets.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 1:58 pm.
Janae, fire is a heart-stopper for me, too. Especially when it’s shooting right by my ear.
I agree about the gluten, although I do think many of us (ahem, ME) eat too much of it. I do love breads . . . and cakes . . . and donuts . . . and more bread.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:22 pm.
It’s the sugar in the donuts, cakes, and even some breads that’s bad for you.
I’m all for moderation because personal experience has taught me that it’s too easy to fall off the wago so to speak when I’ve cut things completely out of my diet.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 3:34 pm.
I have had my hair get stuck in a hair dryer before. I think my last wirds would be I did my best:)
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:21 pm.
Gail, OUCH! That would hurt.
And those are very fitting last words. Much better than to worry about your gluten intake.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:23 pm.
i laugh because i’ve done that. my hair is long and i don’t pay attention to where the hair dryer is and before i know it, i’m either getting scissors or just staring stupidly at my hair sticking out of the intake end of the hair dryer trying to decide if i want to just try to ‘tear’ it out.
i’ve had hair dryers die on me but i don’t think i’ve ever had to catch fire….
…..
…..
nope don’t think i have.
Posted on April 13, 2012 at 1:21 am.
Gail I had the end of a few strands get stuck in the hair dryer once. i had to cut it off. I am soo much more careful now. Luckily my hair is pretty long.
Haven’t thought about things like last words. Too busy living!!
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 2:38 pm.
Excuse the language but mine would be “Damn that was fun.” Haven’t had the blow dryer catch on fire yet but knowing my luck it’ll probably happen.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 8:48 pm.
I have been living wheat and gluten free for a couple of months. It is a very difficult lifestyle but it has been worth it for me.
Never had a hair dryer catch fire in my hand. I saw it on your Facebook post yesterday and I just had to cringe. That is so scary!
My final words…”Keep on partying! Life should always be fun and happy!”
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 9:39 pm.
I’ve never had a hair dryer explode on me, but I’m reasonably certain that my thoughts wouldn’t turn to gluten. But then, I’m sure you would’ve said the same thing… until it happened.
I’m not ready to think about last words today. I just got home from the airport, and I’m a nervous flyer.
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:12 pm.
I don’t use a hair dryer so I can’t say much about it. OTOH, while I would like my last words to be something spiritual like “Hello God, I’m home,” or something along those lines, with my luck, it will probably be “Crap! THAT didn’t work!!”
Posted on April 13, 2012 at 12:55 am.
I’ve never had anything explode in my presence, but jello shots make beautiful colors when they burn. I would hope my final words would be about love, but they’re much more likely to be about not ______ (hitting/screaming at/tackling/wrestling with) your brother–aimed at 1 of my 5 children.
As for gluten, I dream about saltine crackers and Oreos. I get far too sick to cheat, though. I did initially lose 45 lbs. When I started the GF diet, but too many treats are too much. If only I didn’t bake such yummy things!!
Posted on April 13, 2012 at 12:57 am.