Years ago shortly after "starting out on my own" I was given a surplus waffle iron by a neighbor. I decided that one cold, rainy, ugly Sat. night would be the time to "try it out". With the iron having no instructions & with never having made waffles (& never paying particular attention to my mother’s making them), I went to grocery & bought a box of pancake/waffle mix & other needed ingredients, came home, & prepared the quantity specified for four waffles. Heated up the iron (a square iron with four sections) & proceeded to fill up the iron with all the batter, assuming I was putting in the correct amount for the "four waffles" I was making. Soon the top of the iron started rising & batter began running out of the iron onto the counter. I started trying to clean it up, with little success, for the hotter the iron got the more & faster the batter ran out, running not only onto the counter but down onto an adjoining table & onto the floor. I had dustpans, trash cans, everything out trying to catch the flowing batter (it looked like a major volcanic eruption) but just could not keep up with it. Finally I gave up & just sat down in disgust & let the batter flow, after which I cleaned it all up & prepared some more batter & made pancakes for supper.The amount of batter I’d prepared was the quantity for filling the iron four times & making four complete waffles, but I’d erronously equated the four sections of one waffle with the four waffles the recipe referenced & had tried to use it accordingly. What a resulting mess! What a miserable Saturday night that turned out to be! That experience somehow sort of soured me on waffles until this very day!.