Just out of the clear blue sky my billion dollar stove (that I hate, of which more later) started clicking. I was sitting in the living room minding my own business, having a cup of coffee and bedazzling a jean jacket when suddenly out of nowhere CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. The stovetop ignition doohickey just itself turned on. I leapt up imagining a dishcloth in flames or some other inappropriate thing I’d left on the stove melting, smoldering and creating a smudge-pot-like toxic miasma. But no, it was just clicking away on its own, unbidden. I was like What the fuck??!! How is this happening? And why? And more specifically, why is this happening to ME??!!
It stopped if I turned the gas on and the flame ignited but if there was no flame it just sat there clicking away. This is the kind of thing I abhor, as I may have mentioned, not being mechanically inclined. And since I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on I chose to collapse into a sobbing heap on the floor in front of it. But in a masculine way. Eventually, after some productive whimpering and a few hiccups, I wiped my face off and went to the google for answers.
There I discovered that my stovetop does not like water. I had set the Instant Pot cover on it earlier in the morning after I’d made my yogurt, and the water that had condensed in the lid had dripped into the hole where the knob is (there is a good joke to be made here, hole/knob etc but I seem unable to parse it out). Thinking quickly I got my travel hair dryer (I do not need a hair dryer, this one belonged to my grandfather) and within 10 seconds the clicking stopped. The impromptu victory dance I launched into immediately after may have been somewhat more, shall we say, dramatic than he-manish but fortunately the kitchen blinds were tightly drawn and no one was around to witness it.
And for the record, I was not really bedazzling a blue jean jacket. That was a joke.
