My kitchen is sort of small, so I’m always short of both storage space and working area.  The kitchen may be entered from either end, and consists of lower and upper cupboards, counter topsand sinks on one side.  On the other side are, left-to-right while facing them; the gas range, a narrow set of lower cupboards with counter top, the refrigerator, then a set of shelves behind a taller door with the microwave space above.  The counter tops and the top of the refrigerator all are utilized for storage of various items, leaving little working space.

The narrow counter top between the range and refrigerator is my chosen space for making sandwiches, and also is where the plastic butter dish sits in front of our Euro-style toaster as it rests against the wall, taking up the entire width of the counter.  I keep the paper plates on top of the refrigerator, next to the sixteen ounce bottles of acai and pomegranate juice that I sometimes use for variety in place of water when cooking oatmeal.

On the day in question, I wished to make a sandwich, so I moved the butter dish to the gas range, and reached up for a paper plate.  As I tugged a plate loose from the pile on the fridge, I turned to my left, intending to reach into the cupboard across the way in search of ingredients.  Turns out that I had, in addition to loosening a plate from the stack, set the juice bottles wobbling, and the one nearest the edge teetered on over to fall off the refrigerator.

Now it gets interesting.  The bottle did not just crash to the waiting counter top and bounce, as plastic bottles are built to do.  No, it fell in perfect position to strike the curved front/top of the toaster, which caused the bottle to change direction toward the lower cupboards on the other side of the kitchen.  This change of direction was accompanied by an increase in the bottle’s airspeed, from the gravitational rate of thirty-two feet per second-squared, to something around four times that rate of acceleration.  Even more amazing, it struck the chrome handle of the opposing cupboard with the only vulnerable part of a flexible plastic bottle; its hard plastic cap.

The cap shattered on impact with the cupboard handle, dumping the entire sixteen ounces of purple fluid on the floor in front of the cupboards.  Did I mention that our dining/living room carpet begins at the end of that set of cupboards?  Well, being an ex-athlete, I moved with extreme grace and speed, throwing open the door beneath the sink and tearing off a length of paper towel, all in one smooth motion, and immediately bent forward to begin sopping up the juice.  In the process of bending, of course, my backside was pushed backward to allow me not to whack my head against the cupboards while wiping the floor.

Being the talented fellow that I am, I managed to turn on one of the gas burners on the range with one cheek of my backside, while simultaneously applying paper towel to purple liquid.  Hearing the click-click and whoosh of the burner, I whipped quickly around and found the controller, shutting off the gas to the burner that had lit beneath the TupperwareÔ butter dish, and turning toward my wife, who had dashed into the kitchen at the sound of the smashing plastic cap.  Before I could suck in enough air to say anything, there was a flash at the corner of my vision, as the butter dish flared up with a very pretty, butter and plastic-fed flame.  She beat me to it, and managed to put the flame out with no further disaster.

Now I began, while continuing the original cleanup of juice, to rant.  I said something on the order of; “Did you see that?!  Do you know ANYONE else that that would happen to!?  I mean, COME ON!  Tell me just one…”

At that point, one of our Cavalier King Charles Spaniels got a bit nervous at my tone of voice, and peed on the floor.

I left the room.  Yah, and I left her to clean up the rest of the mess, too.  Anyone laughing that hard needs something on which to focus in order to calm her breathing and slow her heart rate.