Kitchen Memories

This is my first year having my own neighbors, so I was excited to make my very own “neighbor treats” for Christmas. My mom has an awesome recipe for Toffee, so she talked me into making it. I see now that she had devised the plan for revenge right from the start. You see, years ago when I was a ornery, hormone-raging teenager I had a little tantrum. Also pertinent to the story is that fact that I hadn’t grown since I was in third grade. I wore tall wooden shoes (that my mother bought for me)and long pants, to give the illusion that I wasn’t as short as I really was. ANYWAY, I was having an irrational tantrum, when I made a kicking motion at my sister. Well, the big old wooden shoe came off and hit my mom right in the forehead. I felt so bad and was so embarrassed that I ran away and cried for hours, I was too prideful to say sorry right then. I’m sure my mom saw that as me not caring. She had a black eye and huge goose egg.
I’ve always felt bad for that.
Apparently so has my mom.
So my mom and I are making Toffee and you have to heat the sugar up to 300 degrees. I was surprised how long it took because water doesn’t take long to boil, but this was very much hotter than water boiling. I was stirring it often like the instructions called for, and when it hit 300 I poured it on the cookie sheet to harden. I hadn’t even started pouring when I felt a searing pain on my wrist. Keeping my wits I put the pot back down carefully and flung my wrist away from the scorching heat. My first instinct was to grab the burn, but as I did, my left hand started to burn. I pulled it off to see that the sizzling candy was still there continuously burning more and more flesh.
I yanked the molten candy off my arm and held the burn. We are not taught to do this, we are taught to put it under cold water. Well, I was taught to hold a burn. My mom told me to put it under cold water, but I knew better. I held it with tears welling up in my eyes. I had experience with burns and knew that it hurt to hold it, but it would be worth it. My mother rushed to our Aloe Vera plant to cut off a piece. She split it open with a knife and spread the naturally cool, healing, gel onto my owie. That was the only time I let go of it. My brain kept telling me to release the pressure, but I didn’t, I held strong. About 20 minutes later I finally let go. It was red where I had been holding and slowly little blisters started to form.
I thought I had failed, because I was under the impression that if I was to hold it, it wouldn’t leave a mark. This has always worked for me, and I lost a little faith in the procedure, UNTIL I got online and read some stories about candy/toffee/sugar burns. Some people go to the hospital and can have Third Degree Burns! One woman doesn’t have use of her hand, another almost lost blood flow to her hand, and another needed a skin graft. All these things considered, I feel like my knowledge of burn care took an ugly situation and flipped it for good.
So I know my mom didn’t really want me to get burned, but I somehow thought that if I linked the two stories, it would ease my conscience about the whole shoe-in-the-eye incident.
It didn’t work.