Dishwasher

Man, Andrea's entry (http://journals.aol.com/andreakingme/Unhinged/entries/421) brought me back.

Once, when I was a kid, I came home from school and smelled gas in the house. So did my big sister.

Now, I can't remember exactly why there were no grown-ups around -- maybe my folks were out of town, maybe we called them and they told us what to do -- I don't know. But I do remember my sister calling the Gas Company.

When you call the Gas Company and tell 'em you smell gas, you don't get one of them wussy 4-hour windows; you get someone to your house Right Quick. And that's what happened. A nice gas company rep came to our house and tried to sniff out the problem.

Pretty much as soon as he got there, he diagnosed that we did not have a gas leak. But he didn't know where the gas-type smell was coming from. He checked everywhere. Finally, he hunted it down to the kitchen. Particularly, the dishwasher.

We opened the dishwasher and found the culprit -- a steak knife had freed itself from the silverware bin and gotten wedged in the bottom of the dishwasher when it ran. Part of the wooden handle of the knife was charred to a crisp.

We were so embarrassed that we'd called about a Gas Leak Emergency when, in fact, we'd just set a knife on fire with on our inability to load a dishwasher.