Rules

In my house we have a few rules…

No one is allowed to touch the water pump except host mom. This is because it’s about a hundred years old and constantly breaks with the slightest misconduct.

Don’t dump the dishwater into the garden. Soap can harm the roses.

Don’t cook eggs in the white pan. Always use a metal one. Don’t ask me about the reasoning behind this rule, I have NO IDEA.

And most importantly:

No one is ever to re-light the fire for the banya heater except host mom. NO ONE.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve broken all of these rules…

It happened last Saturday when no one was home. I was excited and in a hurry to get into Mary City to see my friend Elliott from Lebap. I really wanted to take a shower but when I looked into the hole there was no flame above the gas vent.

What should I do?

The options were simple: Take a lukewarm shower in a slightly cool banya or try and re-light the fire myself and take a warm shower in a nice, warm banya.

I figured it can’t be that hard, so I rolled up some newspaper, turned the gas on, and stuck my arm into the hole.

What happened next left me in a state of shock (and pain) for the next seven hours.

BOOM! The flames burst out of the hole and into me instantly and I fell back in shock. My right arm was stinging in pain and I was covered in black.

It was pretty much the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life…and I sat and cried as my poor arm soaked in a bucket of cold water.

Finally I wrapped my incinerated arm in wet, cold towels, found a taxi and made him allow me to sit in the front seat with my poor burnt arm hanging out the window all the way to Mary.

“Angela, you need to take better care of yourself,” the driver told me. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to set the flame down, stand back, and then slightly turn the gas up?”

“I do now,” I groaned in pain.

It’s been a week so far and I’ve managed to hide my scarred arm from my host mother but it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out.

Some rules are NOT meant to be broken.