The Stories We Tell

So as I will probably do very often, I'm going to plug the radio show This American Life. It's awesome. I stream the old shows when I'm at work on the weekends and there isn't anybody else on the entire floor. I was listening to this show about reruns. There's a whole segment on the stories we tell over and over and it made me think of the stories I tell and the stories my family never hesitates to tell me.

Here's one of my own and perhaps tomorrow I will write about one my family tells:
One story I love to tell and have perhaps told every person I've ever talked to is what I reminiscently call the pie story. So it goes like this: My girlfriend at the time just got a Pampered Chef stoneware pie plate for some occasion from her cousin's wife. She'd be the first to tell you she wasn't really much of a cook but she was excited to try out her new pie dish.

[aside]Thinking back, she probably thought it was magic because pies are hard to make, even after years of practice. Plus she was making it in an electric oven which usually let the temperature sort of float around where you set it. Kind of the like the oven said "eh...close enough."[/aside]

Anyway, she puts the crust in and the filling, it was a cherry pie, and puts it in the oven when she gets a call from a friend who asks her to come over.

[aside]I think they had to round up some kittens that got loose.[/aside]

I was messing around on the computer which was in the living room, adjacent to the kitchen. She asked me to watch the pie and said "the only thing you need to do is take it out when the timer goes off." This was apparently beyond the scope of my job description as will soon become clear. She heads off.

Minutes go by and the timer goes off. I take the pie out of the oven and lay it gingerly on the top of the stove, proud that I was able to accomplish this most basic of tasks and noting to myself how delicious the pie looked and how impressed I was she was able to make such a picture perfect pie on her first attempt.

Time goes by and she's not back so I start to make dinner on my own. I think the plan was for lemon and dill salmon with broccoli. Anyway, I preheat the oven and start the water boiling for the broccoli then go back to the computer. More time passes and I hear a *pop* sound from the kitchen. I lean back in my chair and figure maybe some water had gotten out of the pot or something like that and went back to what I was doing. More time passes and I hear *CRACK* Not good...

I run into the kitchen to find I turned the wrong burner on and broke the pie dish, the contents of which were seeping ever so slowly beneath the electric burner. I shut the burner off and began to contemplate a reasonable excuse for having been so incredibly stupid. While I debate this in my mind, reality interrupts when the pie ignites. The burner didn't cool down fast enough and the ever-so-sugary filling of the cherry pie leaking through the gaping crack in the pie plate combined to produce a stunning display of culinary fireworks. Being the level-headed guy that I am, I panicked and began to spray water on the flaming pie. Brilliant. So the once picturesque pie was reduced to a sweet brown charred and soggy mess.

Needless to say, she didn't think it was funny.

So if you have a story you always tell or one your family always repeats about you respond to this post with it. Could it really be worse than the pie story!?