Why I'm Afraid of Electrical Blankets

When I was 12 years old, my family was living in this old house in Goshen, Indiana. My room at that time was actually an enclosed back porch, so there was really no insulation to keep the room warm. It was wintertime, and if you have ever been in northern Indiana in the winter, then you know it is quite cold. To make it bearable, I had an electrical blanket on my bed. This blanket was about 20 years old and had belonged to my stepfather.

One night I woke up quite cold and realized I had kicked all of my blankets off. To warm up, I turned up the dial on the electrical blanket, intending to turn it back down a couple of notches once I was warmer. However, I fell asleep.

I woke up probably half an hour later, really hot. I could smell something burning, and then I saw smoke. It was kind of like a cartoon where the guy smells the smoke, and as he's sniffing around to find out where it's coming from, then he sees his tail on fire or something. For me, it was my right arm. I saw the smoke, then realized "I'm totally burned! The smoke is coming from me!"

I jumped out of bed and saw that my pajamas were burned, there was a black hole in my sheet and mattress, and the room was filled with smoke. I started to run into the house, then decided I needed to turn the blanket off first, so nothing else would get burned.

I crept upstairs to my parents' bedroom, trying to be so very quiet because Erica was just a baby and I didn't want to wake her up. I opened the door and whispered "Mom, I'm burned." The reaction was pretty funny. Both Mom and Dad sat straight up in bed. Mom's first thought was that my whole body was burned up. Dad's first thought was the entire house was on fire.

Once they realized it was nothing that serious, the lights were turned on, and we went downstairs. The whole first floor of the house was now filled with smoke, and my brother, Vinnie, woke up quite angry from the smoke filling his room. Dad opened doors and windows, and Mom made me put my arm under cold water in the bath tub while she gathered some stuff to take me to the hospital.

It turned out that the blanket pretty much broke in one spot, where my arm was. I had first and second degree burns, and if you look closely today, you can still see a couple of scars. Mom and Dad still make fun of me for trying not to wake up Erica. And that is why to this day, I will not sleep with an electrical blanket, no matter how new it is or how cold I am!