Well, not really, but if you've ever watched one of the umpteen million broadcasts of "A Christmas Story," you'll understand the sentiment. See my signature down there? Turns out it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Pardon me while I have an uncontrollable fit of the giggles.) I got to experience my first CPOP separation and subsequent volcano. I swear, I checked that stuff every two minutes while I was cleaning up, but somewhere in that 120-second interval, my soap went nuclear. It separated, expanded, and rose out of the mold and spread all over the bottom of my oven where it created some beautiful volcanic soap art. OK, turn off the oven, get the mold out, and deal with it.
I was more disappointed than worried at first since I have a liner on the bottom of the oven. Yeah, I have a brain cell. I'm prepared. I have an oven liner to catch just these kinds of accidents. Then the smell hit. Crap! It's aluminum! OK. I scrambled around to get the liner out and in the process managed to spill separated oil onto my oven's poor little bare bottom. (sigh) This soap was doomed the moment I put it into the oven, but it got its revenge before the end. I thought I had everything cleaned up and the next night went to use my oven at 400 degrees. Somewhere around the 375 mark, flames shot through the holes under the burners and smoke poured through the open kitchen window. OMG! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! The search for the fire extinguisher was on and the dogs even joined in the fun. They appeared out of nowhere and seemed hell-bent on deterring our firefighting efforts. By the time we found the fire extinguisher, the fire was out, but my poor oven was covered with soot and the house smelled like the very pits of hell.
The hubs had to work today so I tackled the fire damage cleanup. One can of Easy Off, one pair of Playtex Living Gloves and an untold number of sponges later, my oven was sparkling. I, however, was ready for the heavy duty cycle of my Maytag. Then I realized there are vent holes in the sides of the bottom piece. Holes. Open to some unknown, unexplored area of my oven's nether regions. That's where the oil went in its search for an open flame. Off to search for a screwdriver to remove the bottom panel and complete the post-mortem exam. Yup. There it was. A nice large pool of black, burnt-on oil in ... an aluminum drip pan. Easy Off was out of the question so I reached for the TSP (tri-sodium phosphate - the greatest grease remover in the universe) and scraped out what I could. Put everything back together, crossed my fingers, grabbed the fire extinguisher and fired up the oven. No smoke! No flames! Only the stink of hot Easy-Off for a few minutes and now everything seems to be working fine. And here I thought it was the lye I had to worry about. Nope. It's ME!