Car on Fire

This afternoon I was unloading groceries from my car when I noticed this spot on my passenger seat. It made me laugh as I thought about how it got there, the day I set my car on fire.

Picture it: Bellevue, June 2008. I was moving the last of my items over to my new place and had put all of the items from the bathroom in a box and set them in the front seat. I continued loading random items into the car and it was on the last trip out that I noticed the entire cabin filled with smoke. I was trying to figure out how exactly something caught on fire when I remembered the can of hairspray in the box on the front seat. I didn't really feel like it was hot enough outside to have the aerosole can combust but as there was nothing but smoke in the car, obviously I was wrong.

So I carefully opened the passenger door to try and figure out a way to put out the fire when I got a whiff of the unmistakable smell of aerosol. And then I realized the car was not filled with smoke, but instead everything was engulfed in a cloud of hairspray. So I remove the top box which had been resting on the lidless can, thereby stopping the stream of hairspray pointed directly at the back of the seat.

Luckily, it was summer so I could drive around with the windows rolled down. It took close to a month to get rid of the stench. The seat, however, was not quite so lucky. To this day there is not only a stain, but it is a little hard. At least we know when they say "Extra Hold"-they mean it!