Canning Catastrophe

I have been trying to can a few things lately. We had been successful several times so we decided to do some more canning. Well, I managed to set my mom's kitchen on fire this time! It's really not all that surprising if you know me. These kind of things always happen to me. When I was in college, I had Organic Chemistry lab. The building and everything in it was relatively old. My bunsen burner had a leak in the hose. I was already really fearful of lighting my burner anyway, but when I lit it this time, there had been gas leaking out from the hose and the entire countertop went up in flames! Everyone's papers for their lab were burned, which if you have O-chem, the labs take hours to do and your paperwork is kind of important! No one was very happy! Luckily no one was hurt. Needless to say this was not my first catastrophe in chem lab, nor was it my last. It was kind of difficult for me to get a lab partner. You had to be brave (stupid) to pair up with me!
I was trying to help my nephew in the kitchen and I put the canner on the stove with a hot pad stuck to the bottom of it. Neither my mom or I were paying attention because we were trying to clean up a mess. Next thing I know my mom is yelling, "Something's on fire!" as smoke comes billowing towards me! It was bad! Of course I panicked and started throwing things off of the stove to contain the burn. We all had smoke inhalation for sure. We went around opening doors and windows. It was very hard to breathe. I got a real sense of what it would be like to have even more smoke with a huge fire. I can see the danger in the smoke!
Everything worked out though. There was no damage, just a few melted dishes. We got everything cleaned up and went on with the canning. To think I was just trying to do some food storage!