Right before I got married in 1975 I was 18 and my future sil was 16. We decided to make gravy. I had never made it but my sil said she knew how. We made it all right it was so stiff you could stand a knife up in it and it did not fall over!! And we had no idea how to fix it!!
This is the time in my life when my bils always brought food with them as they had suffered through some of my cooking!!
My mil taught me to make gravy a few months later and she always used this huge huge wrought iron (2 1/2 ft wide)skillet because she usually fed anywhere from 10 - 20 at any given time(big family) Well as I reached over this huge skillet I managed to burn myself. Mil still teases me about when I learned to make gravy.