The Bottom of the Pool by Andy Andrews

The Bottom of the Pool by Andy Andrews

Author:Andy Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2019-04-29T16:00:00+00:00


Fourteen

HOW COULD I HAVE MISSED IT?

Several times each week, my family prepares lunch or dinner in the fresh, open air of our back porch. Pizza, vegetables, bread, meats—summer and winter—we cook entire meals outside.

Now, as you are imagining how we do this, do not imagine a gas grill. I gave mine away a long time ago. I still remember when I decided to get rid of it. My boys and I were on the deck. I was about to turn the knob to ignite the propane when Adam, the youngest of my sons, asked, “Can I do it? Please? It works just like the stove inside . . .”

Adam didn’t touch the knob, of course. I was standing right there, and despite his age, he knew this was a situation that required permission. It wasn’t given. But just like that, I went to the bottom of the pool. I had been propelled by the words of a child.

I was there for only a few seconds and, at the time, did not describe it like that. Honestly, it was years before I would understand the process that had occurred. All I knew at the moment was that I would soon be giving away my previously treasured gas grill. Though millions of people were happily cooking outdoors on gas grills—doing the same thing as everyone else in the same way everyone else was doing it—I had just done a mental 180 and was already thinking rapidly in the opposite direction.

A single question from a little kid had cascaded into a series of thoughts, ensuring that from that day forward, given a choice, I would never use a gas grill again.

Curious, isn’t it?

Do you remember watching your mom or dad stack a pyramid of charcoal and drench it in chemical fluid before standing back to flip a lighted match into the gathered vapor? Whoomp! Yeah, Daddy lost his eyebrows, but we’re having burgers tonight!

After all the hassle we watched our parents endure just to cook a chicken or some steaks outdoors, when the gas grill was introduced, it almost seemed a miracle. Quite literally, millions of us thought in the same direction, and before long, most of our families boasted a gas grill on the backyard patio or deck.

I never mentioned it, but to me, the steaks or ribs or fish I grilled . . . well, none of it ever tasted like the food I remembered from my childhood. I was quietly ashamed that my efforts never approached the culinary perfection my dad reliably achieved with that rusted-out, wobbly, three-legged fire hazard he called a grill.

“Please, Daddy! Pleeeease, let me turn the knob!” Yes, that was the essence of the message Adam was attempting to deliver. All I really heard, however, was the declaration he made that the grill “works just like the stove inside.”

Well of course it did! The stove in our kitchen started with the turn of a knob. So did the gas grill. When the knob on the stove



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