fire

I was minding my own business, doing what normal unattached folk do on any given Saturday night, laundry and ironing. All of a sudden, a short arc of electricity sprung from the bottom of the iron and landed on a nearby pillowcase. Visualize a mini-video of a lightning strike, something you'd see on TV. The pillowcase disintegrated and left bits of carbon on the ironing board, and all this in a matter of seconds. I pulled the iron's plug out of the socket, but didn't notice until later that the cord to the iron was frayed half through, wires exposed. The entire laundry room reeked of burnt cotton, but I narrowly averted setting the house on fire, and managed not to electrocute myself in the process.

Three pairs of cats ago, I had a beautiful male cat with a bottlebrush tail. I named him Amby, after Amby Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon winner.
I was living in an apartment back then, making a candlelit dinner for an unworthy male. [I say unworthy only because if he'd been worthy, he'd be here right now, wouldn't he?]
The table was set, and I had candles lit on the nearby buffet as well. Amby decided to hop up and get a better view of what's for dinner.
That magnificent tail flicked through one of the candles and lit up, bottom to top, like an inverse Fourth of July sparkler. Thankfully, it was just the guard hairs at that point.
If there is any way a cat can have a look of horror on its face, this one did. His sprint down the hall effectively extinguished his tail before anything else could catch. We didn't see him for the rest of the night.

Do you remember the old fashioned electric popcorn makers? They were made of thin metal, had a lid and a handle, and sat on open coils in a base that plugged in. Pre-microwave era. I know. Hard to imagine.
Popcorn was a favorite snack back then, and I was in our small kitchen making some. I pulled the popcorn off the burner and started to pour it into a bowl. Some of it fell into the coils, which were still red with heat. The corn started to burn. A lot. Flames were licking close to the underside of the kitchen cabinets. My ten year old mind thought that qualified as a possible emergency.
Building codes back then didn't require smoke detectors. I did what any well-trained grade school child would do. I yelled "fire."
Boy, was my mother pissed. Not that I set a fire, but that I scared the shit out of her with my yelling. I never could figure that out.

Starting to see a trend...?