Just in case touching the hot stovetop as a child wasn't enough to teach you better, here's a few accounts of why it's a bad idea to play with fire.
Have you ever had a fire grow way beyond what you had expected? It's truly no joke how fast even the smallest flame can spread with the right fuel.
A girl I met while living in Denver told me her family moved there for work after their entire house burned down. Luckily everyone escaped alive but that is truly starting over.
The incidents in my youth never got quite that far out of hand, but they came close. A minute longer without action could have led to a tragic outcome on any of these different occasions.
Being young and thoughtless is a resounding theme through all these close calls with fire in my childhood. One episode, at least, wasn't at all my fault. This first one I'll relate definitely was.
Going back to my days in the Boy Scouts, we used to do a weekend camping trip once a month. Because some of our leaders were ex-military, the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base was a frequent destination.
We were camping in the high hills of Pendleton and working on our Wilderness Survival Merit Badge when I pulled one of my less intelligent life moves. Throwing blank rounds in the fire at night got me in a lot of trouble, but this one could have been much worse.
I built a lean to shelter against a tree with branches I had found and covered it up with leaves. We had to spend the night in our shelter alone as part of the Merit Badge requirements. It was an exciting adventure all the way around, except for the part about dinner.
What would we eat? We had to fend for ourselves.
I thought I was smart (and I was a little) because I had had found a couple military ration packets. There were crackers and pop-tarts but you needed heat for the stew.
For that purpose, the kits included a small can of Sterno. Sterno, if you aren't familiar with it, is a gel form of alcohol. Light it in that can and it'll burn on low heat for a while.
But as it burns the gel turns to liquid, which I spilled on the dry leaves all around me. The leaves quickly caught fire and started to spread. Being I had built my lean-to on a hillside deep with dry autumn leaves, the potential for escalation was enormous.
Luckily, I had my guard up and noticed the fire jump right away. I don't know if I've ever moved as fast in my life as I did trying to stamp out those leaves. They went out, though, and I did sleep in that shelter.
Here's a shorter story about my little brother when he was probably 8 years old. That would have made me about 14 or 15. The fire alarm went off while I was in my bedroom one day, so I went to see what the deal was.
Usually it was from mom cooking but this time it was the upstairs alarm. Smoke was coming from the closed bathroom door. I remember checking the door handle, and feeling it was cold opened the door.
Sitting in the back of the bathroom by the toilet was little David, who had been playing with matches. He must have been striking off one after another because the vinyl floor covering had caught fire in several places.
The fires weren't yet out of control, but seeing four or five different spots was alarming. I could see David crying through the smoke. Mom came running in with a wet wash cloth at that moment, but I was on the towels in the closet down the hall.
A pile of towels quickly ended any hopes those small infernos had of taking down our house, and young David ran far past safety as soon as he had an exit route. It was rare for me to be the hero in this case, instead of the villain.
This third and last tale that nearly ended in ashes was only partly my fault. And only in the sense that I didn't speak up and warn my friends that our idea could have undesirable consequences.
But Ben and Alex had found some bottle rocket fireworks left over from Fourth of July celebrations. And they were determined to light them off. We could of gotten in trouble for just lighting them, cause they aren't exactly legal, but that wasn't our main mistake.
The law wasn't likely to hunt us down for lighting fireworks. Where we went wrong was our choice of where to set them off. Bottle Rockets shoot small fireballs that don't reach that high up into the air. They do reach high enough to hit the dead leaves of a tall palm tree if you light them underneath one.
Had the Palm Tree been trimmed, it probably wouldn't have caught on fire. As it was with many dead fronds, it went up like a pile of straw. And, of course, the Palm leaned over the roof of my friend's house in the backyard.
A flurry of action went down right then which would've been much like watching the Three Stooges had it been recorded. Alex grabbed an upright ladder while Ben grabbed the hose. I found the sprocket and turned the water on.
Ben was trying to hand the hose to Alex as the ladder nearly went sideways with Alex half way up it.
Somehow, Alex got hold of the hose and Ben was able to steady the ladder. Water did the trick as Alex doused that Palm Tree full force. Afterwards we all sat down and quickly admitted it wasn't one of our brightest moments. And no one would say a word to their mom or dad.
Hope you enjoyed the stories of my close calls and remember what old Smoky the Bear used to tell us. It doesn't pay to play with fire.
Happy Hiveing!!!
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