It's astonishing that any college male survives to tell about his university days.
I had been asked to represent the nation of Indonesia at a forum intended to raise awareness of service opportunities in various regions around the world, as I was to travel to that part of the globe the following summer to assist in tsunami relief (i.e. 2004). The organizers encouraged me to stock my booth with clothing, pictures, or other cultural artefacts from Indonesia to help people experience my nation. A seemingly benign assignment. I decided to cook a traditionally Indonesian breakfast item to have on hand - pisang goreng, or fried bananas. I looked up the recipe on the relatively nascent internet and realized that my only concept of the process of deep-frying food came from the voluminous vats of oil I had seen at McDonalds and other such reputable establishments. I called my mom to verify my hunches and she confirmed that all I needed was a pot of vegetable oil. She instructed me to sprinkle some water on the oil as it heated to test its readiness, since oil wouldn't bubble like water when it boiled, and that the water would pop and sizzle on the surface when the oil was ready.
She didn't specify how much cooking oil to use, however, so I procured the largest pot on hand at our dilapidated house on 10th Street near campus, filled it with nearly 3 economy-sized bottles of Wesson cooking oil, and turned on the burner. As instructed, I periodically flicked drops of water on the surface of the oil and watch them dance around before evaporating. As fate would have it, several of my roommates got home from class around the same time and began to congregate in the kitchen. As we chatted and ate, I continued to repeat my chore until the water did indeed pop when contact was made with the oil. I noticed that little droplets of oil sprayed out of the pot each time it came in contact with water. Not much oil, but then again, I wasn't using much water. Somewhat absentmindedly I continued to wet my fingers in the faucet and allow bigger and bigger drops of water to fall on the oil, and in greater and greater quantities. The popping and sizzling was beginning to entertain my audience which had now grown to 7 witless men.
Albert Einstein once mused, "If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." But I don't think he had 21st century 20-something-year-old college males in mind when he said it. One of my roommates proposed a brilliant idea to the group at a pivotal moment in our little experiment. Mike, who hadn't said much since joining us, spoke up and suggested that we toss an ice cube into the pot to see what would happen. The other guys enthusiastically cast their vote in favor of Mike's idea, with my negative vote standing alone as the only dissenting opinion. My reasoning had to do with the amount of cleanup I projected after such an action, but in the end, group-think prevailed as they all confidently asserted their willingness to assist me in dealing with the aftermath. Mike walked across the yellowish-green linoleum floor to the freezer, pulled out a blue ice tray, and popped a square cube from its place by slightly contorting the tray. He nonchalantly closed the freezer door, pivoted, and effortlessly lobbed the frozen projectile toward the stove.
It was one of those moments where time seemed to slow down a bit. All of us instinctively edged back from the pot of oil as the ice cube hung in the air for a long second or two. I had a fleeting wave of panic - probably the retrieval of a survival instinct deeply embedded in my subconscious, there as a result of thousands of generations of my ancestors having dealt with the mysterious and often destructive powers of fire. But before I could make sense of the inner alarm, the kitchen exploded.
In all, the whole drama that unfolded next probably only lasted 5-10 seconds… but it felt much longer than that. I can recall it now in slow-motion detail. I remember that when the ice cube landed in the oil, it seemed to sublimate violently, causing the super-heated oil to erupt. One detail I have failed to mention up to this point is that we possessed a gas stove that heated with an open flame. My wife often recalls events like these from my past as anecdotal evidence to support why she questions my judgment at times.
When the oil hit the flame, it ignited. In a split second, our stove was engulfed in an inferno. As the ice cube continued to sublimate in the pot, oil continued to violently spew in every direction - spilling out onto the floor, the walls, and continuing to erupt up to the ceiling. I remember watching the flames curl around the pot and then jet upward, hitting the ceiling and billowing outward to momentarily fill the kitchen with flame like a scene from Backdraft.
Each of the men in the kitchen had their own reaction - something we discovered only after the fact. Daniel's reaction was to reach for a pitcher of water sitting next to the sink to pour onto the flames (which he graciously stopped himself from doing at the last moment). Mine was marvel that we had just burned down our house, and then to run through a quick mental inventory of what I needed to get out of my room before it was all consumed. One of my roommates prayed. Several of them screamed. And just as suddenly as this conflagration began, it went out. Like it has sucked all the oxygen out of the room and suffocated itself. We later learned, however, that the disappearance of the flames was inexplicable because of how much oil remained, and how oil fires are notoriously difficult to put out.
At any rate, all of us stood in stunned silence for a few moments. I looked up at the ceiling, expecting it to be on fire, only to realize that we had Styrofoam tiles that had simply melted and not ignited. The floor, stove, and walls - while completely covered in slippery oil - seemed untouched by the flames. We were at a loss. Eventually one of my roommates broke the silence with a profound quote from Tommy Boy exclaiming, "that. was. awesome!" It took all of about 60 seconds before a few of them were rummaging through a closet in an attempt to find a Coleman camping stove with the idea to recreate the scene in the street in front of our house. I spent the next two hours intermittently cleaning up the mess - by myself - and deep frying homemade banana batter. That evening I stood at my booth, which was decked out in Southeast Asian paraphernalia, munching on pisang goreng, and thinking deeply about the fact that I had dodged yet another attempt at eliminating myself from the gene pool.