Gasoline

One winter evening my brother and I told my parents we were going to play out in the back yard in the snow. We did just that and we built a snowman, but Josh and I weren't building the snowman just to build a snowman. We had plenty of experience building snowmen- a regular snowman was boring! No, this snowman actually served a purpose! He was our target for target practice for our bows and arrows. It was getting dark and we decided that we needed something to help us see where our arrows were going. We found the solution was to put toilet paper on the end of the arrows, dowse it in gasoline and have flaming arrows.

My dad was in the kitchen and noticed a flame going shooting from one end of the yard to the other. And then another. He came out to investigate and found Josh and I with a can of gasoline with our bow and several arrows prepped with paper and gasoline ready to go. Our snowman with a couple arrows already sticking out of him with some residual burning toilet paper.

We got a good lecture about how dangerous gasoline was. This was the first time I remember hearing that lecture, but it definitely wasn't the last time either. A few years later, after having heard the gasoline lecture a few times, my brother and I were playing around with the large plastic cars that my parents had bought as toys for my younger brothers and sisters. These cars are the ones that are big enough for a child to get inside. You propel yourself in these cars with your feet like the Flintstones. Josh and I decided to fill the consul on these cars with gasoline- light them on fire and send on a quick trip down the hill in the back yard. When the cars hit a bump it would slosh around the burning gasoline and would make the fire much bigger. We would dowse the burning car in water which would just spread the flames. Eventually the cars just melted and burned after having done this a few times. This time there would be no lecture, apart from the angry look on his face I remember him saying, “I'm tired of talking!”