I've always wondered if that little overflow drain hole in the bathtub can take away water as fast as the spigot can supply it.
I don't think it could, but I've never been motivated to conduct the test.
For some really odd reason--maybe I take the predicaments of the ancient primitives too seriously--I thought about this one of those short times I awoke during the middle of the night.
Actually, I'm
sure that the chronically-helpless primitive does this a lot, turning something on and leaving it on while she wanders away to do something else.
I suspect she burns food a lot, and has a lot of boilings-over, which accounts for the quick deterioration of those drip pans.
The chronically-helpless primitive has got to realize she's not as alert, not as on top of things, as she was when Eleanor and then Bess were in the White House. She's an old woman now, and needs to take old-woman precautions, so as to prevent injury to herself and damage to her kitchen equipment.
franksolich is a much younger, healthy, virile, vigorous male, but it doesn't bruise my ego to admit that I too have to take old-woman precautions because of deafness. It's just a fact of life, and one accepts, adapts, and moves on.
The chronically-helpless primitive, when she's cooking something on the stove, should stay right there, doing nothing else but watching to be sure something bad doesn't happen.
But I'll bet she puts something on the stove to cook, and then decides to go and yap on the telephone with Wanda or Freida or Wilma or Madge or Amelia or another of her friends "for just a couple of minutes," or she decides to go watch her soap-opera on television "for just a couple of minutes."
And then stuff on the stove boils over, or gets burned.