Dyson didn't see that one coming
Some people spend ages cleaning and looking after their first car's with a pride that they wouldn't exhibit for any other durable - me, I'm a slob and would personally rather buy a new car than clean out my existing one. Anyhoo, at 19 I wasn't rich and couldn't take that route so after several complaints about the state of the motor (e.g. all the footwells were piled high with empty cigarette packets) I decided that it needed a spring clean.

Whilst cleaning out the motor and checking the rubbish for any worth keeping I had one of those life changing moments - I found a spare fag hidden in a discarded packet - hurrah! So I after visiting marlboro country I put out the fag and got my mum's brand new Dyson and started hoovering out the car. During this act, I hoovered out he ash tray, which unbenown to me, still contained the lit dogend. The Dyson efficiently sucked the dogend up and I continued to beaver away.

Almost finished I noticed a strong burning smell - turning around I saw the Dyson consumed in some quite specutalur flames reaching about 15 foot high. Basically, one half lit fag end + a load of combustible fluff + vast amounts of injected air inside a contained atmosphere is a really good place for a fire to have a load of fun. Anyway, Mummy wasn't happy with her now severely melted Dyson and I wasn't particularly chuffed about half the paint that had been stripped away on one side of my Nova. Ironically, a car valetter would have cost £10 rather than £200 for a new hoover and two weekends sorting out the paintwork.
(drydo, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 12:02, Reply)

FIRE- hehe--nyee--nyeh heh
best thing me and me mates ever did was make mini petrol bombs, it was just a small wqhiskey bottle filled with any flamable liquid, we threw them around in the woods (yes, we were clever) and funniest thing was wen one broke on my leg, i flopped like a fish

by the way

BON JOVI roolz (all those who oppose, should listen 2 him)
(Jinxy - Spontaneous Randomity awaits those who question my pic-a-nic basket, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 12:00, Reply)

At school (and college)
we were pyromaniacs. One science lesson saw a mate of mine throw an ethanol-soaked paper towel through a bunsen flame at another mate. He dodged it and it landed on the floor behind a table. The flame could be seen over the table as it hit the floor. My favourite though was at the pub during lunch break at college. Someone 'borrowed' a bunch of those wooden splint things from their science lesson. We made a tower out of them by weaving them together (which took bloody ages) and put it on the table as an ornament. Then someone set fire to it, producing a two-foot-high wall of flame on the table of the pub which had to be put out a bit damn quick before the landlord saw it.

Of course nothing beats another story featuring the same friend with the paper towel. After he had - er - borrowed a few tins of paint from a warehouse one night, he had to escape over a railway line. He tripped, sparks flew and the paint cans exploded in his arms. He suffered third degree burns to about 20% of his body, and had to have skin grafted from his bum in order to rebuild his face. Last time I saw him he was fine, but since then we've always insisted that our statement about him talking out of his arse is completely true.
(Ash Oops, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:53, Reply)

A few years back
after a few beers at a mate's bonfire, we decided the best course of action, to provide fuel for our dying embers, would be to climb into his next door neighbours garden and get his old shed. Six of us jumped over and lifted it over the fence.

Next morning involved my mate going hungover to B&Q to get anew shed and tools for his neighbour.
( Rev. A-MOL is lurking around these parts again, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:42, Reply)

Stupidity with a mains socket
When I was about 6/7 years old i decided it would be a good idea to put a halfpenny(from my fathers collection) into a live mains socket... while the tv plug was still in.

Result
1 Exploded TV
1 Exploded Mains Box
1 Child with burn marks on arms for 6 weeks
Around £800 worth of damage due to exploding mains and surrounding area
(inablender, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:41, Reply)

Lots of them, but none really interesting
The day I joined my first band, we celibrated by going up and down the lane by my house in scooters and skateboards (this was something they did regually, but I didn't) then we found my brother's old board and some nail polish remover. With the addition of fire, we were soon shooting down this old country lane on a skateboard that was on fire. Oddly enough, we were all uninjured.

Then there was at camping where, in a drunken state, I put a talking box on my hand, got a friend's boyfriend to cover it in deoderant then set it on fire while I did the voice of it in extreme pain due to burning, though again not hurting myself.

And last week after camping again (don't ask why we did this in the middle of Febuary) we decided to cook dinner by throwing eggs, bacon, bread and super noodles on the fire, but when it didn't burn we threw sugar on it. That burnt nicely :D Then the day after, after we packed up all our stuff and our girlfriends went home, we put all the rubbish on the fire- including half our drummer's possessions- his jeans, trainers, cuddly toys, socks etc, but the best thing (as it turns out batteries don't explode well) was the full gas canister someone left. It took about 10 minutes on the fire, but when it finally exploded it was well worth the wait, and threw the rest of the fire over about 10 metres. We never found any remains of the actual canister though...

Oh, and someone on that camping trip once burnt down a field, but was never caught, or so he claims. Someone tried to burn my CD player after he played Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out on repeat from 11pm to 8am.
( Whillow, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:37, Reply)

Not me, but a mate
Well, a mate of a mate. One of the rainy Glastonburys of the late 1990s - someone who had been travelling in the same car as me had spotted some of his mates camping in the same field as us and went off to join them and put his tent up there. The rest of us set up camp about 200 yards away and then endured one of the worst rainstorms ever. We basically spent the whole evening trudging around in ever deepening mud before retiring to our tents to listen to the rain.

The next morning, we see a forlorn figure walking towards us, picking his way through the tents. It's the guy who abandoned us the day before - he's got his arm in a sling and as he got closer I could see that his eyebrows and quite a bit of his hair had been burnt away. Once I stopped laughing, I asked him what the bloody hell he'd done. It turns out that he'd got hungry in the evening and tried to cook on his gas stove, and because it was raining, he took the stove inside his tent. Although you wouldn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what the net result of this was going to be, this genius didn't seem to realise the utter idiocy of what he was doing.

It wasn't just his tent that burnt down, but several around it as well (thank fuck he didn't camp next to us) and most of the stuff he'd taken with him had turned to ashes too. All he was left with was a half-melted stereo, which despite all the fire and rain still worked. There were also a lot of people who were very pissed off with this guy and he really, really wanted to go home. Fortunately for him the rest of us were feeling the same way as we'd endured a wet Glastonbury the year before and as we hadn't got tickets - we'd paid about a fiver to some dodgy gypsy for one of the re-entry handstamp things - no one was really that bothered about sticking around for the whole weekend.

We got back to the car to find that the battery was flat because some plonker had left the headlights on, but fortunately a friendly AA man was around to give us a jump. We managed to find about £2 between us so at least he had the price of a pint for helping us out. All I remember of the journey home was the the odd smell of the charred person.

I haven't seen this guy since, because, to be quite honest, I don't trust him. His stupidy terrifies me. If you're reading this, sorry mate, but some lessons you have to learn the hard way.

Apologies for the length of this post...
(JamScones, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:35, Reply)

Not a disaster. More of a tip
The garden of a rented house I used to live in had a staggering amount of huge yellow dandelions growing in it. One warm summer evening I discovered that when the flowers close for the night, the petals act as a sort of sponge which soak up lighter fluid very effectively.

Simply fill the closed flower with lighter fluid, apply a flame, repeat a hundred times and hey presto, you will have a field of swaying lights for the next 20 minutes or so.

Next put on some appropriate music, open a beer, light up and enjoy

alternatively, you can pretend you are a rock star playing your number 1 ballad to an appreciative stadium. But that might be sad.
(aneraseroflove excuse me...i have to go to space now, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:34, Reply)

Fireball
As bored teenagers, my friends and I would sometimes go and have bonfires - with some beers and joints - in the woods. On one occasion, when we must have been especially bored, we bought a large camping gas canister and put it on the fire. (You can see where this is going, can't you?)

We took cover behind trees, just before it exploded with a suprisingly loud bang, shards of metal flying everywhere and an *enourmous* fireball, which went right through the treetops and was probably seen for quite some distance.

The fire was completely blown out. (I believe this technique is sometimes used on oil wells which have caught fire). Needless to day we got away from the area pretty quickly, laughing like fools.
(Stacker, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:31, Reply)

Fire Face
I set fire to my friend Craig's face. Cos he was an ugly cnut. he wasnt to happy and put me in traction for a month.
(Ush, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:27, Reply)

We were enjoying a schmoke on a hot summer day,
and it turned a little too breezy to skin up, so we moved into the extension to roll up. The three of us, a little baked, had a nice refreshing glass of squash then proceeded to the task at hand. My friend licks the rizla a little too enthusiatically and soaks it, typically we need this rizla, so I decide to dry it with the lighter. We all watch as it flames and slowly floats to the ground, it goes black, looks like it's out and so we go back to the job. When one of us smells smoke we see that the piece of rizla had hit the rug and smouldered away, until a nice little fire was going. The rug had just been brought from Kenya after my friend's parents had come back from celebrating their silver anniversary... it had a nice big hole in it to remember us by.
(smithsonian, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:18, Reply)

Casserole dishes
Me & my brother went through a phase of being juvenile pyromaniacs when we were about 10, we used my poor ma's casserole dishes to make little bonfires on the kitchen table consisting of newspaper, bits of old towels, anything that would burn really! Jay got too close once and signed his eyebrows and the top of his hair - if you've never witnessed singed hair, its really quite funky, it went brown & very curly just on the tips of his hair and eyebrows. It stinks, though. When we started to get a bit too adventurous for the kitchen, we relocated to the garden where we ruined mum's Le Creuset dish (they're well expensive, we got whapped for that one). Happy days!
(Megalomaniac, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:14, Reply)

not me but my housemate
we lived in an old terraced house with a dodgy gas boiler in a cupboard in the kitchen, with a pilot light that had a tendency to blow out on windy days. To relight it there was a little button that released some extra gas and another to make a spark to light it.

So one day she notices it`s gone out again. After 5 minutes of failing to relight it (each time releasing a little more gas) she succeeded, spectacularly. Cue explosion, small fireball blasting out the top of the cupboard, her being blasted out the bottom of the cupboard and large amount of plaster flying off the walls.

come to think of it, the landlord didn`t even replace it, but he looked like santa so he could get away with such things.
(shouldwork, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:11, Reply)

Only two really big ones
Over x-mas all of my house mates went back to our respective parents abodes and being as skint as we were turned the heating off. When I arrived back, with my little brother in tow, surprise surprise the pipes had frozen. I managed to talk the next door neighbours into giving me their oil radiator to stick in the front room. As other flatmates arrived back we all stood around in the kitchen waiting for the living room to warm while we cooked tea. Then we smelt the odd burning smell thinking it was crap in the oven, so we left it. It progressively got worse until someone realised it was coming from the front room.

The radiator had been placed in the middle of the room and had melted its was through both rug and carpet and was now starting to ignite the heated man made fibres. We put it out, with the final damage being a 1' by 6' hole right through to the floor boards. But being resourceful bunch we where we turned the rug round and put the sofa over the hole in the rug.


The second big fire I started was while messing around with some shape memory alloys (heat 'em and the return to the position they used to be) . My task was in 'programming' them by heating them to a certain temperature while holding them in a fixed position. After this they needed to be tested.

As an easy test I placed the SMA wire into some folded paper to give it a bit of resistance. Rather than opening the paper the whole bloody lot ignited. The lab technician saw the blaze and ran over quickly slapping it with his hand. Unfortunately as I was heating it by passing about 5amps and 15 volts through it he got a wee bit of shock and promptly got a wire burn mark across his hand. At this point I cracked up unable to do anything while the technician rolled around in pain, blaze and current still raging on the table. Fortunately the wire melted and a few seconds later the fire went out by itself having run out of paper to burn.
(el_meerkat, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:06, Reply)

fire....I'll teach you to burn
I haven't set fire to myself just yet, but my boyfriend's workmate, Andrew, is a very silly boy. He decided to weld in the basement of his house, and thought it would be a great idea to prop the thing he was welding on an oxycetalene tank, which promptly exploded, and Andrew's house went on fire. It's a miracle that he wasn't killed, the stupid asshat, but there you go.
(Nausin, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 11:01, Reply)

I could answer this question a dozen times over, here's some of the highlights
there's the time I nearly set my biology teacher on fire, or the firework I accidentally shot into the kitchen, or the time I wave a gas cooker lighter too close to a roll of kitchen paper and that went up in flames almost taking out a cupboard.
I've worked in lots of kitchens, so plenty of fires there, or there's the time I set my hand on fire while cleaning paint off with acetone.
I burnt my fringe off once, and managed to get the entire top surface of our workbench covered in flames in chemistry class.
There was another time I set my hand on fire, but that was just for a giggle (well it seemed funny at the time). an there was one time i was having "intimate relations" in my bedroom (yes it's TRUE, it REALLY HAPPENED!) and I threw the quilt off the bed, after a few minutes I says "what's that funny smell" (a common enquiry during "intimate relations") lo and behold, the quilt was covering a small candle and is slowly smouldering, as soon as I pick it up the oxygen caused the small smouldering patch to burst into flame, panicking like a loon, I look around for some water. TA-DA! the fishtank!
Needless to say, the fish were not amused by this sudden intrusion into their space, but at least they survived (for a couple more weeks anyway.)

Next week: have you ever blown anything up?
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 10:47, Reply)

Many times.
We used to smoke "da weed" in a group of bushes out of sight of passing people.

One night, a sleeping bag was there, kid or homeless adult? Who knows. We set it on fire and pissed it out. Next night, a new sleeping bag was there. We set it on fire and pissed it out. Next night, a new sleeping bag was there. We set it on fire and pissed it out.

there wasn't a sleeping bag there the following night.

Another time, we saw a group of younger kids going into a disused utility basement in a derelict group of offices. On my way back home after a good drink, I decided to have a look at what was going on there, after I saw a group of them leave it. entering the small concrete room (approx 6 foot by 4 foot) I found a sleeping bag and various other items.

Guess what I did?

Set fire to it, but *didn't* piss it out.

The fire brigade had to come out for that one.
(Pandaemonium, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 10:43, Reply)

Not me (it never is)
At college all our halls were really just big, old houses. Rooms had to be shared, but they were massive with huge bay windows and sweeping lawns.

One night, a young chap was having a "quiet smoke" whilst lying on his bed. Some ash fell onto the mattress and it caught light rather too quickly. Feeling a little unsure of what to do (perhaps tired and sleepy?), our friend frantically tried to bash the blaze out with towels and coats - all to no avail.

Looking round, he sees no choice but to open the bay window and heave the flaming mattress out - he's on the first floor so he pushes it out and it lands, burning away, on the garden below.

Perhaps it was the effect of his "cigarette", but out friend decides that, with the window open now, that the burning mattress below might be an amusing thing to land on were he to jump out of the window. So he does, and lands on the mattress sending up ashes and flames on impact. This is obviously great fun, as he rushes back in to repeat the jumping and landing process three more times before the fire brigade turn up and the police cart him away.
( groovegenerator The man who mistook his wife for his wife, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 10:38, Reply)

Pyromania
At the end of finals at uni, we decided to burn all of my mate's revision notes. We decided to do this in the metal wastebin in my room. This is a college room, on campus, with huge windows. Anyway we had quite a good blaze going for a few minutes, it was nice and warm and we made toast. Then someone asked what happens when it goes out - there's a smoke detector right outside the door. We didn't have to wait long to find out because the fire went out and within seconds the room was full of smoke and those bits of floating charred paper. Unable to open the door for fear of setting off the smoke alarm we opened the window and soon had a small audience of hockey players standing around outside who had been distracted from their game by what looked like a college room on fire. Eventually some bright spark poured the contents of the kettle in the bin and the smoke stopped, but we had to stay in the room for another 10 minutes while the smoke cleared. We were coughing and hacking for several days after that, and the bin is probably still in the same palce on the floor, seeing as it melted itself into the carpet.
(yesyesyes, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 10:34, Reply)

firestarter
Not me but my brother's schoolmate. one fine evening back in the early 80s, my brother's mate decided to start a fire. He looked for something appropraite and decided that a flat bed lorry loaded with huge rolls of paper (like 2m bog rolls) would burn quite well. It did. Lots of fire engines later, the fire was put out and much mirth and giggling came from my brother's mate. Twat.

Also, one Guy Fawkes night, me and my family were celebrating with fireworks in the back garden. One of the rockets didn't go straight upwards as intended but sort of sideways. It landed in a garden 3 doors down and, as a consequence of a long dry summer and a less than rainy autumn, set the garden alight. I had to run round to the neighbours house and knock on the door to ask if I could go into his garden and extinguish the flames. Luckily there wasn't much damage.

Furthermore I have done the silly thing whilst lighting BBQ's where I "soak" the coals in about 1 litre of meths. I stood back and launched a lit match ino the BBQ expecting it to catch slowly and rise to an inferno before settling back to usual BBQ proportions. I didn't expect it to explode. Arse.
(urgle-splurgle molesting small goats since, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 10:23, Reply)

pesky tents
after a month hitchiking around the highlands i was on my way down to civilisation. I figured I'd have a drink or two in a bar nexty to loch lomond and then start out in the morning. Unfortunatly i forgot to put my tent up. I managed to make it back to the closest peice of grass that i could find (next to a telephone box) and tried to put the tent up. I failed.

Thus I decided that I'd sleep in the phone box. Considering that this was the end of january this wasn't very warm. Coupled with the fact that it was now raining and howling a gale I needed to stay warm. A coke bottle cut in half with a candle in it seemed the ideal answer (to my half-cut mind) and with this I then tried to stay awake all night. I failed again.

With a start I woke up to fire not 3 inches from my nose where my slumbering hands had tipped the candle holder and set itself alight. Not only this but also the sleeping bag. Had to blow it out which then filled the telephone box with noxious black smoke. Thats when the police arrived.

May you live in interesting times...
(she is blonde you know, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 10:20, Reply)

When I was about 15/16
I started smoking. Of course, since my parents dissaproved of this act, I had to smoke outside - preferably in the tenfoot behind the house. One warm, dry night, I went outside for a smoke before bed, and threw my tab-end on the floor...which then somehow rolled into the bushes growing under next-doors wooden fence. This being the middle of summer, the plants sparked, caught and promptly burned the fence down. Yours truly blamed my mate on the other side of the road and all was well.
(Quixall, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 10:15, Reply)

Stoned student
When I was at Uni we tended to smoke a fair amount of spliffs. One of the main evening entertainments was in trying to persuade each other to do menial tasks like make tea or go to the shop when we were all too stoned to bother.
One day one of the girls who shared our house came into the living room, screamed at the sight of flames running up the curtains, ripped them down and ran them out to the kitchen sink. When she came in to see three of us just sat there she (reasonably) completely flipped out. "Why were you all just sitting there watching the curtains burn?" She yelled ...

"We were arguing over who's job it was to put them out ..."
(martin_e, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 9:46, Reply)

i have 2 major experiences...
i'll tell you about them in order of when they happened. First was a time when i was about 14... i was wearing this slipknot top...for some reason i actually thought they were alright, moving on... I'm as any other normal kid, liked to play with fire. i lit this candle on my window ledge, started to burn bits of tissue and stuff, makes a smell. mum comes in. "stop messing around or i'll conviscate your candles". i stop messin about. I look at the flame on the candle and notice its flickering then i looked at the window, it was open. so what do i do? i lean over the candle and shut the window...lo and behold my T-shirts on fire. ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH, mum comes in and starts hitting me. i think it may have been a bit hard, she was probly pissed at me. anyway, when it got put out i noticed the only thing burnt on my top was the face of 1 of the slipknot group. it was so perfectly burt it was unbelieveable, now i dont like slipknot, i think they possessed my t-shirt :S

this one is better...
it was about a year ago, when i was 16. Everyone in the family comes over for a bonfire and fireworks. my mum has a boyfriend whos 27, he's quite immature but fun non the less. my parent let me drink so i was pissed at the time and so was he. Theres a big pile of branches and leaves in the garden cause we'd been gardening and getting rid of an old shed. Start to poke little bits of paper in crevises. Get ma lighter and set them all on fire. IT WAS PATHETIC! me and kieran sat there laughing and being sarcastic "isn't this fabulous" " call the fire brigade" etc... so as you do...get some pertrol/white spirits...or anything flammable. (although adverts tell us not to we all do) We go to the petrol station and get a can of petrol, doust the wood and crap with it. stoood back for about 10 seconds and got the lighter. "i wanna light it" "sure go ahead". i get my lighter and hold it next to the dripping timber, (from now imaging slow motion) CLICK....SPARK...WHOOSH!!!!! it fuckin exploded! litterally, i was engulfed in flames for about 3 seconds and then it went out. PILE OF SHITE! i had no eyebrows or leg and arm hair for ages...although that saved me shaving my legs for a while (quite convenient) i spoke to my mates about it later and they said that it exploded cause petrol gives out fumes... balls
(amy_metc4lf, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 9:42, Reply)

I had a flatmate
who thought it'd be a good idea to take down the paper chains we'd put up for Xmas by setting fire to the middle of them. Quite pretty until it broke in half and swung across the room to rest against the curtains.
(Mild Green Fairy, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 9:39, Reply)

Science Lesson + Crucible + Paraffin = Pyromania
The instruction sheet for the science lesson was simple - "put two/three drops of paraffin into a crucible"...

Unfortunately, our experiment group was ordered to accommodate the div kid, who filled the crucible to the rim with fuel, then torched it.

The 12 inch high flame was quite good fun until the science teacher clocked it, and dashed towards us with a wet tea-towel. The paraffin spread over the table, and so did the fire...

Oh, how I look back with fondness...
(SirPsycho, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 9:37, Reply)

I've started a few fires...
When I was about 12 or 13 my mate and I used to have bonfires up in the local woods. He worked part time in a garage, and managed to procure some battery acid (pretty concentrated sulphuric). We had collected some iron filings from metalwork classes at school, so off we went up to the woods with said ingredients (and also some white spirit we'd nicked from his dad's shed to get things going).

We lit a fire, and then put the iron filings into the acid - which was in a GLASS lemonade bottle - screwed the top on, lobbed it on the fire and hid behind a substantial stone wall.

Quite impressive results.

Around the same time in my life, I was doing some chemistry experiments in our kitchen, and one day decided to mix some magnesium (which burns pretty hot anyway) with an oxidising agent, viz. sodium chlorate weedkiller (my dad had got agricultural grade stuff which had no fire retardant in it). Knowing that this would create a fairly rapid reaction, I laid down several sheets of aluminium foil on the work surface to prevent damage.

I was 12, remember - I didn't know aluminium melted at 750C and burned easily too!

So I lit the magnesium, which then burned extremely rapidly, right through the aluminium foil leaving a black crater in the work surface.

My mum was none too pleased, and the crater was there for years before my parents got the kitchen renewed!

More posts later, once I remember more of my teenage exploits.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 9:24, Reply)

I was a Scout Leader... highly responsible bloke....
as were all my Leader mates.

We'd had a good evening 'wide game' with the kids, which ended in them setting off firework rockets to signal they'd won.

After they went to bed, the leaders stayed up into the small hours having a few beers. Seemed to me to be a good idea to set off the leftover rockets - and spotting a length of plastic drainpipe by a fence, decided we should see if it worked like a Bazooka, held horizonatlly on my mate's shoulder.

It did.

Whooooosh! over the tents and into the distance. Then silsence. Then a distant glow.

We charged over there to find the neighbouring village common on fire (dry gorse burns well!). Anyway, we fought the fire for 30 mins, called the fire brigade, evacuated the camp site... I ended up in hospital with burnt hands - but was proclaimed a hero for trying to put out the fire, saving the kids - all obviously due to local yobs lighting fires! 20 years ago, locals still talk about the nifght the common was razed to the ground and about the brave Scout Leaders...
(Wombat Joe, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 8:51, Reply)

i was quite the pyro in middle school
I set things on fire all of the time in middle school - Somehow, the 11-14 age group seems ripe for it. It had actually got to the point where for my 13th birthday, some friends at school got me a zippo that was engraved with the word "PYRO".

For some reason, I though it it would be an interesting project to create a circle of gasoline in the garage, and see what happened when I set it on fire. LLo and behold, it burned -- and it burned spectacularily, producing a column of flame that visibly want up to the roof of the garage. The roof of the garage was mostly insulation, so this was a particularily scary, as well as strangely fascinating.

We stood there admiring it for a while before we realized the potentially disasterous consequences, and grabbed the closest thing we could find to put out the fire -- which happened to be a pitcher of Kool-Aid. It did the trick.

The outside view must have been really cool as I opened the garage door, with black smoke billowing out.

I probably would have got away with it, except the whole basement smelled like air freshener -- Whenever my Mom smelled that, she knew that something had bene burning, and I was instantly grounded.

She also unexpectedly came home once to me and a friend trying to set a report card on fire so we could legitimately claim that it was lost -- It was pretty comical, with me holding a report card and lighter fluid behind my back. She asked what was in my hands, so I showed one hand, empty. She asked about the other, so in total cartoon style, thinking I was being smart, I switched out the contraband behind my back, and showed another empty hand. She was not amused.

We also created a flaming pentagram in our driveway once -- It was for a photography project. Our more conservative neighbors never spoke to the family again after that one.
(mysticmcj, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 8:31, Reply)

Youth and Clumsiness
Sometime in my college years I tossed a cig into a bathroom trashcan where it lit up the various snot-rags and soiled feminine products wrapped in toilet paper. I didn't find out about it until the next day when I was chastised and denounced for being stupid drunk. I was, sure.


When I was a young curious child, the magnifying glass was a fascinating device to burn holes in dry leaves. The old couch on my porch happened to be in the rays of the sun this day. Hmmm, I wonder what would happen. After focusing the glass on the couch cover, it quickly turned red and began to lightly smoke... Then the guts of the cushion began to burn. Is it hot out here? OH SHIT! I ran to find some suitable extinguishing device (i.e. container of water) and eventually put the thing out. It was my only "couch-burning party" and not a lot of fun. I never burned another leaf after that.
(Caleefornian, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 8:14, Reply)