I have a confession to make: despite coming of age during a rather enlightened and liberated period in human history, I have allowed many traditional gender roles to creep into my life. You know, he earns the bacon and I fry it up in the pan, that sort of thing. However, it's not the frying pan that I'm afraid of - it's the gas grill.

Yes, that hulking chunk of stainless steel with its menacing propane tank, various dials, extra burners, and spider web-laced rain cover is what strikes fear in my heart. There is something quite sinister and flammable about the whole affair.

I'm not sure when this grill-phobia began; I expect early in life with repeated harsh admonishments at cook-outs to give the hot coals a wide berth. Perhaps it stems from watching male relatives saturate stacked charcoal briquettes with enough lighter fluid to send flames shooting skyward like fireworks, blackening the leafy canopy of less fortunately positioned trees. Or maybe it's because despite the many safety features installed on our own silver monster, my dear husband still managed to singe our son's eyebrows off one day as our erstwhile tot stood to close while Daddy used the self-ignite button.

No doubt about it, grilling falls within the masculine sphere of household chores. On many a fine summer day, we ladies watch in wonder and alarm as members of the Y-chromosome persuasion take to the deck or patio to incinerate the family meal: the meaty portion anyway.

My husband exudes confidence no matter the challenge; fish, chicken, or steak. Of course, his self-empowerment is fortified by cracking open a bottle of frosty courage and only then  daring to scrape the charred remains off the grate - evidence of past culinary crimes.

I expect I am not the only member of the smarter, oops, I meant softer sex who finds one pressing reason or another to cower behind the fridge door while hubby fires up the coals, or, worse, flips open the fuel tank. My throat tightens when I hear that ‘tick, tick, tick' sound as gas floods the belly of the beast. I know that it will be soon followed by the terrifying ‘Whump!' of combustion.

Once I'm reasonably sure that the yard and /or the children have not been set ablaze, only then do I emerge from the kitchen bearing a platter piled high with some variety of raw carnivorous delight. As if enacting an idyllic scene conjured by Rockwell, I lovingly hand over the plate and thus the task of preparing dinner.

Perhaps, to appeal to modern sensibilities it would be better to frame this transition of nutritional servitude to the context of television, say CSI. Only this program's acronym would stand for Cuisine Sparks Indigestion - Special Vittles Unit.

Tune in on Sunday's, we're on at five o'clock sharp.

Laura Douglass writes for the Seven Lakes Times, where this column originally appeared.