Have I ever told you the story of how I burned my face off?

This'll be fun. It's like trading ghost stories around a campfire. I could tell stories all day long, mostly because I've been through some crazy stuff - as we all have, I'm sure.

You have?

You did?

Oh really?

Not to be a story-topper, but back to the burning-my-face-off story.

Okay, so. Picture it: June 2002. Lubbock, Texas. Lucy moves out of the prettiest, pinkest house in Lubbock and into the cutest little apartment in Lubbock. It's the second story of a house owned by her psuedo-sister-in-law. Stairs on the outside of the house lead up to a tiny little porch. Walking into this apartment is like stepping into a cabin - hardwood walls, low hardwood ceilings, hardwood everything. There's even a moon cutout on the bathroom door, and the "bedroom" is a tiny little nook, set back where the eaves of the roof meet and form a triangle shape, big enough only for a full size bed.

This apartment was tres romantic and cozy. I miss it, if you can't tell. Also, let's switch to first person past tense, shall we?

It was the end of my first week in the apartment, and I'd been living amongst cardboard boxes and balled up newspaper since the move-in. I was slowly beginning to unpack my house, finally, that Saturday. I was in the midst of setting all my dry-goods (cans of green peas, black beans, etc) on the pantry shelves when I came across a box of Homestyle Bakes. You know that stuff where everything comes in the one box, and when you mix it all up and layer it in a pan, you end up with strangely yummy mashedpotatoesturkeybiscuit stuff? That. That's what I found.

I was hungry, and I had just unpacked my pans, so I was set. All I had to do was preheat the oven, mix together all the beige stuff in one pan, and stick it in the oven. Easy.

I mixed. I layered. I pre-heated.

I opened the oven door when it was all ready to go and discovered that the inside of the oven was as cold - as chilly as a well digger's ass, in fact.

My thought process was unusually immediate that day. It happened so quickly, all within the space of half of a second, that I'm not even sure what really occurred. To best of my knowledge, though, here's what it would have looked like in slow-mo:

(Lucy opens oven door)

Lucy: What the...? I was preheating this sucker.

Lucy (leaning down to peer into the oven): Why is it so cold in there? Is it broken?

Lucy (reaching for lighter resting on the counter next to her Marlboro Lights): Oh, duh, it's a GAS oven.

(Lucy's hand brings the lighter closer closer closer to the oven, her face about a foot away from the open door, her thumb resting on the little flicker part of the lighter.)

Lucy: I hate mickey-fickey pilot lights. They're scary.

(Lucy flicks the lighter.)

(A flash-flame explodes from the stove, enveloping Lucy's face and hand in burning burning burning burning BURNING BURNING BURNING BURNING PAIN)

Lucy: ...

Lucy: ...

Lucy (drops the lighter, slams the oven door, rips her shirt off over her head to stop the flames from eating her whole body): gasp!

Lucy (standing in her kitchen with no shirt on, blinking her eyelash-less eyes): OH MY GOD HOLY HICCUP OH HOLY JESUS OH MY GOD I BURNED MY FACE OFF WHAT THE WHAT THE WHAT THE OH MY GOD.

Since I had just moved into to the apartment, my phone wasn't hooked up yet. I didn't even have a cell phone, and for some reason my pride wouldn't let me go ask the neighbors (whom I had not yet met) to use their phone. I mean, there is just no icebreaker for a girl with no shirt on and a lobster head asking to use your phone because her oven just exploded into fiery flames. None.

I remember getting into the shower. I remember getting out of the shower. I remember getting into and out of the shower no less than 12 times. I remember putting aloe vera gel onto my face, and then thinking that I was an idiot and washing it off. I did that four or five times, at least. I remember staring into the bathroom mirror to make sure I wasn't blind and that my face wasn't melting. I remember convincing myself that I wasn't dying; that even if I was burnface, I could still live a fulfilling life. As a hermit.

I remember finally putting clothes back on, resting between each garment to put cold cold water on my burning burning face and arm. I remember wetting ten or so washcloths, wrapping them around my hand and arm, taking the rest with me downstairs in a little Tupperware bowl filled with ice water. I remember crying when I got into my car because it was June and the trapped air in the car was so hot that it made my face feel like it was on fire all over again.

I remember stopping the car at the end of every block to put cold wet washcloths on my face, and finally making it to the Emergency Room after crying and chanting in my car.

When I got to the ER, the admitting nurse apparently did not understand the "emergency" of my situation, hence my standing in front of her in the "emergency" room.

"And why are you here?" She asked after I basically threw my insurance card and drivers license at her in response to her monotone "Name. Address. Social."

"I burned my face."

"How did you burn your face?"

"I BURNED MY FACE I SAID I BURNED MY FACE IT HURTS IT HURTS."

"How did you burn your face?"

"MY STOVE EXPLODED AND IT BURNED MY FACE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD."

"What do you mean your stove exploded?"

"EXPLOSIONS FIRE FLAMES BURNING OH, THE BURNING."

"Please have a seat."

"DID YOU HEAR ME I SAID MY FACE IS MELTING IT'S MELTING I PROMISED MYSELF IN THE CAR THAT ALL I HAD TO DO WAS MAKE TO THE E.R. MELTING BURNING MELTING."

"Please have a seat."

I ran to the bathroom in tears, screaming and crying like a maniac. I remember somebody knocking on the door, but for whatever reason I thought they just wanted me to hurry up. That really pissed me off, so I yelled "GO AWAY." Apparently another nurse behind the idiot nurse heard me screaming, and came running after me, and then I told her to go away. Oh, the irony.

After crying and cursing and re-wetting washcloths for my face and arm, I finally came to my senses. I dried my hands, looked myself in the eye via the stainless steel hospital mirror, and ordered my reflection to take control of the situation. I opened the bathroom door and snuck into the adjacent room to look for a phone. After I called a friend for backup (god only knows what I said when she answered), I walked back into the lobby prepared to walk up to the admitting desk and demand help - commando-style.

The nurse I had dismissed a few minutes earlier was waiting just around the corner for me. "Oh!" she said, surprised when I appeared. "I thought I lost you." She immediately led me past the admitting nurse, past the nervous people in the waiting room - all of whom were staring at their hands, trying not to make eye contact with Crazy Lobster Face.

The next thing I remember is laying on the hospital bed, heart rate monitors attached to my chest, a breathing tube hooked up to my nose. My hand and arm was still wrapped in damp washcloths. And also, the best part - two IVs were connected to my hands: one for hydration, and one for morphine. Sweet, sweet morphine.

Morphine.

How wonderful is morphine? Well, take it from Lobster Face. One minute I was crying hysterically, mentally saying goodbye to my future husband and children and consoling myself that even if I was sad and alone forever, there would always be Lifetime TV, and Dorothy, Rose, Sophia and Blanche would never turn their back on me.

The next minute I was floating. Floating above the hospital bed about five inches. Suddenly, everything struck me as funny.

"So," I asked the nurse who was busily checking my blood pressure. "Am I going to look like that guy on Mask, you know, the movie with Cher and Eric Stoltz?"

That struck me as hysterical. "No! I know. The Pay It Forward guy. With his chest all burned. That's going to be me, except with my whole head, right?"

I could barely spit that out between floaty giggles. The nurse tried to ignore me, quickly masking her horror with a straight face. "Shhh, there there," she said, patting my leg. There there? I thought? HELLO? I am mask face. I am Darth. There is no "there there" in this situation.

Giggle.

I think that's when my friend arrived. She came running through the door, panicked. I still had a washcloth wrapped around my hand, which was clenched in a fist. She told me later that when she saw my hand wrapped up like that, she immediately thought I had melted my fingers off. A minute later, when the nurse removed the washcloth to look at the burn, she breathed a huge sigh of relief that I still had five fingers.

That also struck me as funny, and I spent quite a bit of time pretending that my hand was, in fact, melted off. She was not amused.

At this point, everything becomes blurry for me. I know that the fire department was dispatched to my house at some point, because my friend's girlfriend had to meet them there. Apparently in all my shock I neglected to mention that when I said "my stove exploded" I was exaggerating just a bit - there was a flash fire, yes, but my stove was still intact.

I know that they ended up transferring me by ambulance to a different hospital that had an actual burn unit. I remember my sister arriving, her eyes wide, relieved to find that I was not melted. My sister-in-law /landlord came also, horrified that I had hurt myself, teary because it happened in her rental property (totally not her fault, I'm just an idiot sometimes).

After a few hours, the hospital sent me home with a diagnosis of first and second degree burns and some healing salve.

Man, the worst part of the whole thing was explaining, again and again, that the whole reason I burned my face was because I forgot how to use a gas stove. Saying that to my boss, to the cashier at Target, to my sister and my friends and my cats and my mom and dad, was not fun. The funny wore off pretty quick.

My face healed exceptionally quickly - after a week or so it looked just like a bad sunburn, in two weeks it was basically back to normal. I could only take two days or so off from work, (actually, my mother forced me to go back after I cried and cried, reminding me not-so-gently that I had rent and bills to pay) and it was definitely hard to go out in public with mini-eyebrows, burned eyelashes, and Lobster Scarface.

I remember one of my co-workers telling in me, very seriously, that I shouldn't feel embarrassed because of the way I looked. He said that while very pointedly NOT making eye contact with me.

I am lucky, though, that I didn't do permanent damage. So lucky. Now it's just a story, a very, very long story, to go along with all the other "God, remember when Lucy did (insert embarrassing and stupid things I've done)" stories.

Storytime is officially over. And there you go.

Lucy loves you |