So this is one of those things that sounds fake, but I swear to god it happened. I (21F) live in an off-campus house with two roommates, but this happened while I was hosting a few friends for a movie night. One of them, Maya (22F), is known for being a bit… intense when it comes to food. Like she genuinely believes that cooking is the only real form of therapy and gets weirdly defensive if anyone suggests otherwise.

Anyway, during the movie, we started smelling smoke. Not popcorn smoke—burning, plastic, something-is-wrong smoke. I ran into the kitchen and saw the dishwasher had shorted or something, and there were visible flames coming out of the panel under the sink.

I immediately yelled for everyone to get out. We grabbed a fire extinguisher and called 911. The fire was small and got put out quickly, but while all this was happening—Maya was boiling water on the stove.

I didn’t even notice until the firefighter pointed out that the stove was still on. Maya had started cooking spaghetti in the middle of a literal kitchen fire. When I asked her what she was doing, she said—and I quote—

“I panic-cook. It’s how I regulate. I wasn’t going to eat it uncooked.”

After everything calmed down, I told her she was being incredibly irresponsible and that she could’ve made things so much worse. She got super defensive and said I was “invalidating her coping mechanisms” and that “not everyone deals with stress the same way.”

I told her I didn’t care if she wanted to cry into a bowl of marinara after the emergency, but she literally made a dangerous situation worse and ignored instructions to evacuate. Now she’s not talking to me, and some mutuals are saying I overreacted and should have just “let her do her thing.”

AITAH for snapping at her? Or is cooking pasta during a house fire just... not okay?