burn, baby, burn

I caught my hair on fire today.

It was sitcom worthy.

Ok, it wasn’t, because even though I told Suzy it was legendary, in reality it was sort of blah.

How can fire be blah? you ask

Good question.

It can’t.

But my hair didn’t really catch on fire.

It just sort of singed a little.

Here’s what happened:
The reason I feel like it was more epic than it was is that at the time I was thinking how, in theory, sitcom-like my life could be. A foreigner, living two stories below an Indian lady who asks me up for coffee constantly, next to an actress who wears flowy outfits, whose apartment smells of incense and whose partner has a beard, in a city where people walk around, proud of the fact that they have the most indecipherable accent in the UK. It could be, but it’s not- because I don’t really interact with any of those people. I totally wish I did. But what’s important is at the time I was thinking about how it could be like a sitcom.

I was thinking this while making coffee.

Important note: I do not have a coffee maker. I do not have coffee filters. I have no real experience with actually making coffee, except in hotel rooms where things are measured.

Another note: I think you make Robusta coffee differently than Arabica coffee differently, but I can’t be sure. This was Arabica, hotel coffee is Robusta… I think.

Back to the story:
I had decided that what I needed in my life was a little coffee. I had been fantasizing about it all day. I had even gone out and bought milk- which is weird because I’m not all that into milk and sugar in my coffee. I guess some part of me knew I would need it.
So my plan was to boil the coffee grinds with water in a pot and then strain it. Good plan, right? Well, I let it boil, and I figured just letting it be at full boil for a few minutes was a good amount of time. I threw into what seemed like a decent amount of water what looked like a reasonable amount of coffee grinds because, let’s face it, measuring is for wussies. I also threw in a spoonful of sugar because, you know, tea is better when you boil the sugar with it- so probably coffee too.
When I had what looked like a boiling pot of swamp water, or a cauldron with poison bubbling, I took it off the stove and poured it into a bowl, through a spaghetti strainer. I’m actually impressed that the strainer caught as much as it did. I would say it got about 85% of it. I needed to get the rest out though, since coffee grinds don’t sit at the bottom of the cup behaving. No- they swim around, getting stuck to your teeth and ruining your respectable coffee flavor. Something had to be done. I decided to strain it through a stained hand towel I have just washed.
Before you say anything; it worked.

Well, sort of.

The problem with pouring coffee from a bowl into a cup covered with a towel (as so many of you know, I’m sure) is that you can’t really see the cup. So, naturally, I bent over to watch where I was pouring from the side.
That’s when I heard sizzling. I stood up straight, getting coffee all over the counter in the process, to search for the origin of the sound. That’s when I smelled it: burning hair.

Turns out bending your head over a still hot stovetop is not in the “good idea” book. Particularly when you have long hair. Because after you do, you have a tiny patch of slightly shorter hair.

I started laughing, further spilling the coffee everywhere. By the time I stopped, the coffee was no longer hot (also due in part, I’m sure, to the time it took to put it through multiple straining processes) and I had to heat it up in the microwave. And add milk. Lots of milk. And more sugar. Actually, a little too much sugar.

But no, to answer your question, my hair didn’t actually catch on fire. No flames bursting forth, consuming my head instantly. Just a little chunk of singed, shrunked hair with some crispy, curly ends.

And no, to answer your other question, the coffee wasn’t that good. I drank it diligently, however, causing me to lay on the couch watching old tv episodes online for the rest of the night with stomach pains.

It was worth it to me.


tl;dr version: "when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire" (by the Stars. I like the quote)