Stories From My Childhood, Part Four

Also known as, "Why you should always listen to your mother."

In my childhood home, we had a coil top stove.

Like so.

Children are shits. That's a fact. Children are also know-it-alls. That's also a fact. Another fact is that children are often wrong in their assumptions about the universe. Yet another fact is that children (and young adults, especially) will defy their parents simply to defy them, even if they know their parents are right. All adults know this to be true, because we were kids once, and we definitely did just that.

As small children are wont to do, I spent a lot of time inspecting any activities my mom did that looked interesting. This is how I memorized how to make chocolate chip cookie dough (that never really made it into the oven to become cookies) and learned where the best goodies were hidden in the pantry. So one day while I was shadowing my mom in the kitchen, I informed her of a simple fact that I had deduced.

I had watched as she used the stove. The dormant, cool stove had black coils that I could touch or even sit on without risk of burn injury. When the stove was turned on and was hot, the coils turned a bright red that would surely burn the shit out of anyone foolish enough to get too close. From these observations, I developed the hypothesis: black coils are cool, and red coils are hot. Therefore, after the hot stove was turned off and the red coils turned black, they would be cool to the touch and safe to get close to.

My mother informed me that I was mistaken, and if I were to touch the black coils, I would burn my hand.

I said, "Poppycock!" and slammed my hand onto the black-but-still-hot-as-fuck coil. My hand remained on the coil for about 1/3847238419824714th of a second, and then it was off again and I was running around the kitchen screaming.

My mom calmed me down, saw that there was no real damage, and slapped an ice pack into my palm. The next time she told me not to do something, you know what I did? Yep, I promptly forgot the lesson of the coil top and completely ignored her.

"Taylor, you can't ride a cow!"

"Whatever, Mom. I do what I want."