my other one also involves a cousin, but this one was a bit younger than me. he had just gotten in trouble for setting a neighbor's antique chair on fire in their basement. i couldn't figure out how he could do something so stupid. we hung out all day and at various times i would ask how he'd done it, why he'd done it, etc. his answer was always - "i don't know".

in the afternoon we were over at my house and my parents were at work. we are watching movies and eating pizza. i get up to go to the bathroom and when i come back he is just standing there with a stupid grin on his face and he asks me if i "really want to know" how he set a chair on fire. i said yes, because i just couldn't understand how anyone could be so stupid.

he explains to me that bug spray - namely OFF! is flamable. i said "uh huh". he then says that they were spraying it and igniting the spray. i said "that was stupid to do it in the house". he says, "uh huh". i thought that was the end of it, so i went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. as i come back i hear him say that he figured out that the trick is to not spray it, because it is hard to control the spray. as he says this i see him (in slow motion) pull a lighter from his pocket and move his hand toward a glass A&W Root Beer glass sitting on my dad's end table. I yell "NO!" he says, in a container it's easier to control and lights the glassful of OFF!.

apparently it isn't easier to control because as soon as a column of flame shot from the glass he panicked and tried to pick up the glass to take it to the sink. yeaaaah, right. glass. flames. he burns his hand and jerks is away from the glass which of course lands on my dad's pride and joy. his lazy boy. when he came home from another 10 hour shift dad collapsed in that chair with a huge glass of Lipton Ice Tea - every single day. but not this day, because that chair went up in flames.

i put it out quickly with my shirt. the light brown nap of that chair was black. the smoke alarms were going off, and the house reaked of a chemical fire. i spent about two hours frantically cleaning the chair and was able to get the black off until it was no longer visibly damaged. the problem was that it was crispy to the touch. my cousin looks at me and says "he probably won't even notice". that was the first time i ever hit a person. i broke his nose, gave him a black eye, and knocked out one tooth.

and then i got grounded for a month. it wasn't until i was in my late 20's that for some reason we were all talking about it and i found out that my cousin had gone straight home to his mom and told her that i beat him up so that he wouldn't tell my dad that i had almost burned the house down. my aunt called my dad at work and apparently he was just so tuned up when he got home that he never even heard my side of the story. when his veins started bulging and he announced my grounding i assumed it was because i broke my cousin's nose. dad had thought for all those years that i set the fire.

that cousin just got stationed in korea. serves him right.

I must have been in the 8th grade. That day, in my science class, I learned that when you place a piece of zinc (or galvenized metal) into muratic acid, the byproduct is hydrogen gas (a very reactive and flamable gas). Hmmm. This to me seemed very far fethed. Was this yet another one of those urban ledgends made up by geeky science teachers to make themselves sound smart, or did this actually have some truth to it?

When I got home from school, my brother and I (we being latchkey kids ourselves) were looking for something exciting to do until mom and dad got home. I had this brilliant idea. My dad's workshop had an endless supply of galvanized nails, and having a pool, we had large quantities of muratic acid on hand. :litebulb: Ahha! Surley, mom and dad would approve, I mean, after all, it was all in the name proving that science teacher right.

I grabbed an old tupperware container, a lid, a plastic straw, some nails, and the acid. I placed the acid in the container, poked a hole in the lid and slipped the straw through it. I placed a half dozen or so nails in the acid and placed the lid tight on the tupperware container. Now lets see, what was I missing...oh yeah, a fire source. You see, it was my intent to create a sort of bunsen burner if you will. The idea was to let the hydrogen gas build up until it began to shoot out of the straw, then I would simply light the straw and voila! Instant torch. Yeah, I know, but keep in mind I was in 8th grade, a boy, and bored.

I waited a few minutes to let the gas build, lit the match and placed it at the end of the straw and waited for the jet rocket flame to emerge. I was a little aprehesive at first, stepping at arms length with the match in case the flame grew wildly out of control...nothing. I kept it there a little longer stepping closer now while my concern fadded replaced by bewilderment. Still nothing. A few extra seconds more, a few steps closer and the straw began to burn but still nothing spectacular. I turned to my brother and was about the announce this science experiment to be a complete failure, proving once again that science was a big disapointment. Ready to to back to school the next day and denouce the teachers claims and lable him a big fat lier. very idea of zinc and acid creating a flamable gas indeed.

Then I heard it. The loudest bang I had ever heard. Like a gun shot, a firework. The hydrogen gas inside the container finally lit, causing it to igniting a fairly large explosion therby blowing the lid off the container and the contents of the container everywhere within a 5 foot radius (by now I was standing well within that 5 foot radius). After I cleared my ears of the ringing sound and gathered my thoughts as to what just happened, I suddenly came to realize the burning sensation growing over the my left arm and the left side of my face. I was douced in muratic acid and it was eating me alive! Thinking quickly, I ran for the pool. Ran for the cleansing waters to wash away the acid. As I did so, there was a part of me that thought, "this was the stupidest idea I ever had." Another part of me thought, "That teacher was right...damn him!" Sill, another part thought...."success!"