Several months later shortly before Thanksgiving the elderly neighbors to the right were preparing dinner. She decided to put a full pot of greasy liquid on her gas range and inform her inebriated husband that she was going down stairs to get Christmas decorations and to watch the pot. He of course fell asleep and the gravy or whatever it was came to a boil and made contact with the burner with the expected results. Again I spotted the fire and told mom to call 911 and again she did not believe me (I’m starting to wonder about her candidacy for a Darwin Award, especially as I’d not been yanking her chain the previous time. Fortunately due to health problems, my brother and I are both adopted. Darwin already removed her and her proven incapacity to believe anyone’s word that she might be in danger from the gene pool). Luckily we weren’t the only ones that called 911 but again, the home owners were unaware that their home was ablaze because the smoke alarms were not working and no one was paying attention to a pot full of grease over an open flame.

No one was hurt in either incident but both houses sustained major damage. The left hand house required a completely new roof and half of the right hand house was lost. Both times dad and I sat on the back porch drinking hot chocolate and watching our neighbor’s houses go up in flames as there was little else we could do at that point.

As for my mother, eventually she will win her own award. The year we built the tool barn dad and I repetitively told her not to stand under the roof where we were sitting because it was dangerous. She cussed both of us out regardless of the fact that the day was windy, several items had already fallen from the open roof joists and we were cutting support struts up there by hand. She was eventually hit in the head by a falling level at which point she blamed us and accused us both of throwing it at her. The level had been sitting on the far end of the roof from us so we’d not accidentally kick it off the roof, out of reach of both my dad and I. To this day she still smokes with her oxygen machine running less than twenty feet away. I moved out of the house after dad died for my own safety as I have many similar stories about mom's brand of "safety"

Submitted on 07/14/2008

Submitted by: Nicole Szonye
Reference: Personal account

Copyright © 2008 DarwinAwards.com

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Neighbors A and B and your mom are all looking for their Darwins, aren't they? (My neighbors house is burning, but it's not MY problem...I skipped the "fire spreads" lecture at school.) This is almost beyond belief. And your write up was very good, altho you could use the "enter" key a bit more. Thanks for the great stories, Nicole!

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account

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