ok, this was posted in the misunderstood QOTW, but relevent.
Around age three or so I was boarded out for several months while my mother recovered from surgery. I stayed with family friends who had just moved to the area and had very thick accents. Their verbal influence shall we say truly fucked up my burgeoning vocabulary.

Shortly after returning home, as I played with pots and other sundry utensils on the kitchen floor, a cast iron skillet suddenly burst into flames on a burner someone had inadvertently left on.

Shrieking "FIRE FIRE", I ran to my parent's room only to have them try to fob me off with the likes of "Don't worry, it can't hurt you" and "It will go away on it's own".
Not until the smoke started to billow past where I was still jumping and shreiking and into their room did they realise that I wasn't screaming "SPIDER SPIDER".

I'll never forget the sight of mother trying to douse the fire with teacups of dishwater (which of course made the grease fire worse) or father flinging that flaming skillet through the window with the remnants of the breakfast sausages flying out of it like miniature meteorites, in turn starting small fires of their own.

The moral of the story is twofold. Never ignore your child when they are frightened, no matter how silly it may seem and always open the window before attempting to toss flaming objects through it.
( sosumi, Thu 3 Nov 2005, 16:44, Reply)