BUTT ON FIRE

Usually when my butt is on fire it's because I ate something that disagrees with my stomach.  Occasionally (once every five years) my butt might be on fire from colonoscopy prep.  However, generally speaking, my butt is reasonable and usually behaves itself when it comes to things like matches and fireplaces and other catastrophic, flammable situations.

Perhaps these life experiences add to the confusion of my recent ride to work.

Let me give some background.  The first time I ever encountered heated car seats was in my sister's old Volvo station wagon en route to my grandmother's house.  Between us we were traveling from Maine to Rhode Island at night, with me dragging my kids along, to go to my grandmother's house after she had died.  It was late in the evening, and I was fairly certain that I didn't have to pee, but suddenly my bottom was warm and slightly uncomfortable.

Since I have zero filter (and since I'd have to get kids out of a dangerous situation), I said to my sister, "Is your car on fire?"

This comment almost caused a massive accident on I-95 as she started checking her side and rear mirrors searching for errant flames shooting from the undercarriage.

"No, no," I explained to her.  "My butt's warm." 

Heated seats. 

Now, though, I am totally used to heated seats.  My car even has a driver's side heated lower back portion to the seat.  Once in a while while driving along with my butt cheeks completely and totally toasty, I flash back to that initial moment when I first thought that seat heaters in cars felt like peeing on a closed toilet seat.  Now, I consider them gifts from the mechanical gods.

(Smokeless seat heater is ON.)

The weather here in New England has been a bit like a seesaw this winter.  Sometimes it is icy cold in the morning then forty degrees by the afternoon; sometimes the wind cuts through like icy death.  I alternate between a fuzzy jacket zipped to my nose on my way to work, to a sweater and the windows open for the ride home. 

Every morning, though, I heat up the driver's seat before I head out.  If not for my butt then at least my lower back will be comfortable.  On this particular morning, it's cold, single digits, but the air is still and calm.  It's frigid but not unbearable, so I leave the seat heater on all the way to work rather than shutting it off halfway there when the temperature in the car becomes tolerable. 

I am driving along, radio cranking, seat heater cranking, when I smell smoke.  "Ahhhhhhhhh," I say to myself, "the sweet smell of someone's fireplace."

Except that the smell doesn't go away.  I know that once an aroma enters a car, it takes a short while for the smell to dissipate.  It seems to linger a little too long, though.  I open the window a little bit to discover if the smoky smell is coming from something bigger and more serious that a passing chimney.  Nope, no smell in the outside air, but, as I close the window, I can still smell the smoke as strongly as I did a minute or so earlier.

I start to panic.  Is my car on fire?  I check the side and rear mirrors.  Nope, no tell-tale orange glow anywhere.  I concentrate on the hood to see if maybe I might have an engine fire.  Everything looks good.  I check the dashboard for any signs, signals, or messages that indicate a problem, but I find nothing amiss other than the incessant smoky stench wafting around the car.  This is when I remember that my seat heater is on. 

Good gawd, I must've set my butt on fire!

This thought consumes me for about ten seconds before I realize that maybe, just maybe, my mind is playing tricks on me and maybe I really don't smell the fire any longer.  Perhaps it was just an exceptionally smoky fire that made its way through the air and into the vents of my car on this crisp morning.  Indeed, though my butt is comfy warm, it is not, I repeat, NOT on fire.

This is a relief for many reasons.  First of all, no one wants to have a car fire, especially if the driver is still in the car.  Second, I won't have to explain errant burn marks on my butt cheeks to anyone, least of all a local firefighter who is probably a parent of a student in my class.  Third, I won't have to openly admit what an idiot I am thinking that I set my butt on fire on the way to work (except, of course, that I am doing so right this moment).