Mom Is Not On A Roll

(While my mom is extremely good at her job and normally pretty smart, she has a tendency to be rather ditzy and say some really stupid things. I’m taking a dessert course in Stockholm, and she joins me as she’s been there more than I have and knows her way around. We’re at the hotel the night before the course, and Mom insists on styling me up for the evening. She’s just styled my hair and puts the hair straightener, still plugged in, on the carpeted floor.)

Me: “Well, if the floor catches fire, it’ll be your fault.”

Mom: “Oh, that’s OK. If it starts burning, I’ll just roll over the fire!”

Me: “…Uh, I know that I said it’d be your fault, but a sacrifice like that seems a bit unnecessary.”

Mom: “No, I mean that I roll on the fire to put it out.”

Me: “Or we could use the shower hose, which sprays water and is a much better choice.”

Mom: “…But when the ground is burning, don’t you roll on it to put the fire out?”

Me: “No, Mom, that’s for when you are the one burning.”

(Mom, realizing how wrong she was, broke into a hysterical fit of laughter. She’d apparently remembered it wrong all this time and never found it strange. It was the last part that I found the most baffling; That she’d never stopped to think that rolling on a fire to put it out sounded really weird.)