Almost Flame-ous

Some years ago, I worked part-time at a local grocery store, in the wine & spirits department. And it was during one of my shifts that an older woman came in and asked me where she could find champagne.

I showed her our selection, she chose a bottle, and I inquired if there was anything else I could help her with. “Yes,” she said. “I need a corkscrew.”

So I led her to where we had a few options and left her browsing while I went about my duties. But a moment later, something occurred to me.

I quickly tracked the woman down and said, “Ma’am, sorry I didn’t think of this before, but you really shouldn’t use a corkscrew on sparkling wine.”

The woman rolled her eyes and said something along the lines, “Oh, but it’s just hard to get them out sometimes.”

And I said something along the lines of, “No, ma’am, you don’t understand. The bottle could explode.”

We went back and forth this way for a moment more, but she remained incredulous and purchased a corkscrew anyway.

I think about that interaction from time to time, hoping against hope that she had a good first aid kit at home.

Why is this relevant? To show the limits of intuition.

A corkscrew, you’d think, is a screw for uncorking corked bottles. Except when said bottles’ contents are highly carbonated.

Likewise, when you see a fire, you likely think, Let me pour some water on this thing. And that works. Most of the time. Unless it’s a grease fire, in which case, you’ve just made a bad situation much worse.

But the two situations differ in this one important way. In the first scenario, the case of sparkling wine, it’s better to have no equipment on hand, lest you’re tempted to use it. With a grease fire, meanwhile, the more equipment you have within reach, the better. Having a fire extinguisher or one of these Prepared Hero fire sprays nearby, for example, means you’re less likely to run to the faucet.

Or, hey, why not have a fire extinguisher and these things? In the kitchen and in the other rooms of your house as well.

And that’s easy with this offer, because you can get a 4-pack (of either the Dry Stop or the Vapor Clean) or an 8-pack (4 of each option).

But, of course, if you’ve bought these from us before and had reason to use them, let us know how they did in the comments.