For Immediate Release

SUSAN CLARKE CONTINUALLY STYMIED BY STOVE BURNER DIAGRAM

OCTOBER 10, 2007, LOS ANGELES, Calif. After six months of living in her current apartment and using the stove an average of twice a day, Susan Clarke is still unable to fully wrap her head around which knob operates which burner. Each knob has a small diagram of the stove top and corresponding burner printed next to it, yet 99 percent of the time Clarke turns what she believes to be the appropriate knob only to have blast of blue flame explode somewhere on the stove other than where she has placed the tea kettle or sautee pan. This error has resulted in the singeing of several potholders and the tragic disfigurement of a rubber spatula. “In addition,“ she adds, “it makes me wonder if I may be missing a particular quadrant of my brain.”

In fact, the burner map found on most consumer-grade stoves is similar to pattern-based, problem solving puzzles used in standard IQ tests. And if her ability to operate her stove is an indicator of Clarke’s own aptitude for logic and spatial relations, she may in fact qualify for a “special needs” bus pass. In an attempt to conquer this culinary conundrum Clarke has been taking time to study the stove top in a no-pressure situation, but sadly, pre-test cramming has done little to improve her performance once there is a package of bacon and a griddle involved in the equation. “I just don’t see how this dot is supposed to represent this burner,” she maintains, “unless this is an undersea view. Was this stove designed for the aquatic community? Because that’s the only logical explanation.”

Clarke is hoping that once she comes forward with her story, throngs of others will voice their support with admissions of their own stove knob misinterpretations, “and then the healing can begin. It all starts with dialogue. And ends with closure. And somewhere in between there’s a lawsuit and a new warning label.”

Clarke suspects that cooks have been suffering from this same syndrome — which she hopes to have officially declared SKS, or Stove Knob Syndrome— for hundreds of years. “Take a look at Benjamin Franklin.” Inventor Franklin was responsible for the Franklin Stove, a precursor to the modern day gas and electric cooktop. “Wonder why he didn’t have any hair in front? Probably singed it off by constantly turning the wrong knob on his Franklin stove.”

Representatives of the Benjamin Franklin Institute did not return calls requesting information on the inventor’s descendents and their propensity for hair loss or excessive calls to the fire department.

###