Flash! Ah-ahhh!
Another childhood hobby of mine was building model rockets. This was before it was actually legal in this country, so you couldn't get proper model rocket motors. I was reduced to buying firework bottle rockets, and stripping them down to separate the rocket part from the stars and other shit that I wasn't interested in. Then I'd build a model around the motor, and launch it.

So one day I'm experimenting with fuses. I'd constructed a new type, and was testing it. But my lighter was running out of gas, and a draught kept blowing it out. So I grabbed an empty pot, stuck my hands into it for shelter, and sparked the lighter.

Now, when I say "empty pot", I actually mean "Pot full of all the extracted stars and other flash powder that I'd removed from the rockets, which looked exactly the same as the empty pot". So I sparked a lighter in a pot filled with about five or six rocket's worth of pyrotechnic effects. And my hands.

It didn't go well... No lasting damage, as I managed to drop it pretty sharpish, but I had enormous blisters for weeks afterwards. What was worse was that I couldn't admit to my parents that I was in any pain, since I was of course absolutely definitely forbidden from "playing with fireworks".
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 29 Nov 2013, 17:22, Reply)