“Let There Be Darkness” -LOH #207

For a while now, I’ve earned the name “LTBD” at home. It’s an acronym for “Let there be darkness” and I’m going to tell you all about it. But before that I would need you to promise me that you won’t laugh at me, deal? Cool.

Let’s run it from the top, yeah? I’ve never liked cooking, part of me feels like it’s too much stress but my mom has also been trying to make me think otherwise. Her theory is that even though I might think it’s stress, it mostly ends up with great rewards(food).

The thing with me is that I can cook but I don’t like doing it so most times, even when I’m cooking, I set alarms in between to bring me back to reality. I could be in the kitchen but absent minded. It’s even worse when I step out of the kitchen because that would mean I would completely forget I’m even cooking in the first place.

About some months ago, my mom told me she was bringing a visitor home and the person said she wanted fried plantain. I didn’t even wait for her to tell me what to do because I already wanted a reason to fry plantain. Funny enough, that’s my specialty but that day? Sighh. I got the ripe plantain, proceeded to peel, wash and cut them.

I then put oil on fire and left it for a while for it heat so it would accelerate the frying process. Realizing it was getting dark, I went out to remove my things from the clothesline and that was it. I didn’t go back to the kitchen till my brother shouted from his room “something is burning!”. It then dawned on me that I was heating oil to fry plantain. Guess what? Your girl was taking her bath by then.

What happened was that, after taking my things from the clothesline, I folded them, watered my aloe Vera and then went to the bathroom. So you can imagine how long the oil was on fire for. I quickly put on my bathrobe and rushed out of the bathroom with soap lather all over me. When I got to kitchen, the whole place was filled with smoke. In fact I couldn’t even enter. Fortunately, my brother was able to pass through the smoke to turn off the stove.

Looking at how smoky the whole kitchen went, my brother shouted “Ei!, Let there be darkness”. According to him, I’m the only person he has met who can call forth darkness and by darkness he meant smoke. We immediately called my mom to inform her there wasn’t going to be any fried plantain for her visitor. She asked me why but I told her to “thank God for our lives”.

See, you don’t have to even say anything, I have learned. Even if it takes 10 hours to finish cooking, I’m never leaving the kitchen.