ACCIDENTAL PYRO

I almost started a fire in my house today - actually I DID start a fire in my house today, but it was contained just in time. I lit a candle this afternoon, one of those gel candles I got as a souvenir from my friend's wedding (Toni, it was the candle your mom made!). My mom always tell me to be careful about gel candles because for whatever reason, they burn differently from the typical wax candles. It's always an accident waiting to happen when you put something as fragile as fire in my hands. As if the world were not dangerous enough. But I love the smell this candle creates and I've BEEN careful about it...until today I guess. Out of the 3 candles sitting above the toilet, I've used this one the most; which you can tell because there's only a third left of the sweet-smelling gel in the clear glass holder. This measure I should've taken into account before I let the candle burn so long.

It had been about an hour since I lit the wick and, as I was washing my hands (my sink is outside of the actual bathroom) I heard a crackling noise. When I looked into my bathroom, I saw that the whole candle holder was filled with a flame the size of my fist and, as an impulse, I BLEW ON IT! Quickly I realized that it wasn't a freakin' birthday candle when, upon my breath, a small flame shot up onto the towel hanging above the candle so I grabbed that and patted it down on the floor. In my inconceivable panic, I took a half cup of water and poured it over the flame WHICH MADE IT BIGGER, so I filled the cup again - this time all the way to the brim, and dumped it quickly onto the flame, causing the gelly-waxy stuff to splash onto whatever was within a 1-foot radius, like the toilet seat, the wall, the floor, the trashcan, etc. But it's okay because I managed to extinguish it.

This whole fiasco probably lasted about 3 minutes, and I was by myself so the panic was magnified about 50 times! That was a close one! At least now I can say that that accident I feared was going to happen, DID. I'll be careful next time...