Explosion

  

I should say first that something happened, it game me a scare but I was completely fine. I am not naturally melodramatic but I do think since my anxiety problems started I am prone to scaring more easily than I used to. Anxiety attaches to everything. 

A moment which felt like forever but was only a second at most. An instance of fear and a narrative constructed to match it. An explosion. I stood motionless with terror for that tiny eternity fearing the worse. I had been making the boy a burger for lunch and as always at the end toasted the bun and burger in the oven. The timer pinged, I opened the oven door and there was an explosion. Loud and with force. I saw the sections of burger fly out and I felt wetness on my legs. That was what brought the terror. Wetness. Blood? I did not want to look. A hundred different images from the big screen filled my head of what I would see- torn trousers ripped apart, wounds and more. If I didn't look I was OK but I had to look and did I see what I feared? 

No. As it turns out it was not blood but Pepsi Cola that saturated my bottom half. Honestly my heart was racing so much. The girls have lately been getting up during the night and helping themselves to juice. Fizzy juice that is. Loads of diluting there but they only crave the fizzy stuff. The memory came to me of my wife saying she was hiding the big bottle of Pepsi in the oven before bed. Why the oven of all places? My plan was to move it somewhere else but I forgot then and it had long gone from memory today when I turned the oven on. No harm done in the end except a ruined lunch and a half hour for me cleaning up and scrubbing the oven. I despair sometimes.