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Senior year of high school I had some friends over. The usual friends plus one guy from Ireland who was in town to see his girl, who was one of my friends. We wanted to have a fire so we went to my backyard. My dad had just bought a firepit-type-thing. Shows you how educated I was about it.

I grabbed some newspaper, a lighter, and the first logs I saw. Lo and behold, the logs wouldn’t really light. They would for a second, then they’d go out. Thinking logically..I went to the garage and grabbed the gas tank.

And they still wouldn’t light! I’d douse um’ and they’d catch well for about 5 seconds before flaring out again. At one point Chris, the smart-mouthed Irish guy, said, “If you’re not careful- watch that flame crawl up that line of gas you’re pouring.” Now I wasn’t about to let this foreigner, who I secretly loathed for the way his accent made the girls knee caps buckle, show me up was I? Was I!?

Yeah, apparently I was. Soon after he said that it happened. The tip of the gas tank caught and I flung it off my hand, almost hitting somebody. My father’s precious lawn caught then. Somehow my parents didn’t hear the shouts and screams directed towards me to get the hose even though they were in the nearest room, shutters up. I doused it out. Two weeks later my dad noticed the dead grass and the half-melted gas tank. Putting two and two together- he pulled me aside, scolded me, and reminded me of his mother when he said I could’ve lost an arm or more. I understood him though. Turned out the logs I had been trying to light were the kind you’re only supposed to use shavings of to start a fire. Told you how educated I was about this sort of thing.