Another First

Until I was in high school, I had never cooked anything except in my Easy Bake Oven. As best I can remember, it had two settings: crack your teeth on it overdone or ooey gooey waiting for salmanila to strike underdone. My mom did all the cooking because, well, that's what mom's did. My job was to eat the food that magically appeared on the table each night and then try and skate out of doing the dishes because that's what kids did.
So it was with mingled fear and disbelief that I accepted the news one Saturday morning at work that my coworker and I ( think Lucy and Ehtel) would have to cook a hot lunch for eight people. (we were the cleaning ladies, by the way and I didn't even want that job....it's a long story).
After searching for the candid camera crew (this was before Punk'd), we decided that if our employers were desperate enough to turn us loose in the kitchen when there was a McDonald's right down the street, we would give it a try. How hard could it really be?
Naturally, we decided on hamburgers and fries. Okay, so we didn't so much decide on them as it seemed to be the consensus of everyone we called that that was probably the safest way to go for the people who would have to eat this meal. We had frozen hamburgers, an oven with a broiler and those fries that you put on a baking sheet and pop into the oven. Even we could handle that.
Or not. Upon opening the bag of fries, we discovered that there weren't enough for eight people. That is when the brainstorm hit......or the great kitchen disaster of '79 as it came to be known.
We had seen the weekday cook make homemade fries dozens of times. There was nothing to it...just peel the potatoes, slice them and drop them in oil until they are a beautiful golden brown. What a coup this would be! How amazed all our friends and family would be!
They were amazed all right. They were amazed that we didn't get fired.
The peeling and slicing went fine. It was the actual cooking that destroyed the kitchen. We had put a big pot of oil on the stove and turned it on high in order to bring it to a boil. We peeled the potatoes and checked the oil. It wasn't boiling. No problem. We sliced the potatoes and checked the oil. It still wasn't boiling. No problem. We slid the burgers under then broiler and checked the oil. It still wasn't boiling. Now we had a problem.
Lunch was supposed to be ready within the next few minutes and the oil was not even forming those little bubbles at the bottom of the pot. What were we to do? We couldn't mess up hamburgers and french fries! How pathetic did you have to be not to be able to make the easiest hot lunch in the world? After all, McDonald's did it billions of times. A day.
In desperation, we did the only thing we could do...we took off the lid, grabbed handfulls of sliced potatoes and threw them into the oil hoping for the best.
The stream of oil that shot up into the air made Old Faithful look like a defective squirtgun by contrast. Thick black smoke filled the air, and even as we rushed to open a window, someone came running up the stairs toward the kitchen yelling, "Fire! Fire!" We groped our way to the door, hastily assuring everyone that despite the thick coating of grease all over the ceiling, walls and floor, the gag-inducing smell, and dense smoke, all was well. It wasn't a fire. It was their lunch.
We began getting cooking lessons the following Monday.