She's on fire..... OH CRAP!!!!

Another Kroll family favorite....

So, when I was nine, my family traveled to Montreal for a weekend.  It was beautiful, and I enjoyed being treated like an adult as we went out to a fancy Franco-Vietnamese restaurant.  As fancy as it was, the place still catered to children, and crayons and coloring pages were made available to us girls.

I love crayons.

Like, a lot.

Anyway, I got very enthusiastic about coloring.  A little too enthusiastic.  I mean, the colors, the smell of wax, ideas taking form and bloom beneath my hand... I was mesmerized.  Focusing, I leaned over the table to perfect my masterpiece.

Too bad that this was a fancy restaurant.

Too bad that there was a lit candle in the center for some sort of "ambience" or other such French nonsense.

Too bad I had long hair.

Key word: "had"....

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I had my hair up that night, with twin tendrils of curls hanging down on either side of my ponytail.  Unbeknownst to me in my artistic trance, one of these strands had caught fire, and like a fuse, the flame was creeping up my hair toward my face.

Luckily for me, my darling mother noticed flames of death reaching for her small daughter's face.  Like any brave mother, she leapt across the table to crush out the flame with her hand.

Unluckily for me, I was still unaware of the situation.  What I quickly became aware of was the uncommon and terrifying sight of my mild mannered mother screaming and lunging across a table at me with surprising speed!

We crashed.  It was very undignified... yelling and crashing in the midst of this nice restaurant, and I became quite indignant, still unaware that my hair was ever on fire... just aware that my foot was crushed and that my mom was a psycho.

Then I saw what was left of my hair.

So yes... my life has always been this way.  Just in case you were wondering.

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...but I still color at restaurants... :)