When I was 13, I had a friend who lived in the house behind me. Jimmy H. and I went camping at his brothers farm, somewhere in the country. We were on our own and totally unsupervised. I was ready to go. I had my new sleeping bag and everything. After the sun had set and we finished setting up our camp, Jimmy decided that it would be cool to see what a real line of fire
would look like ( you know, like the movies). I tactfully agreed. We filled up an old coffee can full of kerosene from the lamp. The brilliant plan was, he would run very fast and pour a little out at a time. Thereby making a line of fire
. Easy peasy.
He walked to the fire and bent down to start pouring out the kerosene and the entire can went up instantly. He panicked and threw the can. It landed on my new sleeping bag. We grabbed it and tried to put it out. First, we threw it in the mud and jumped on it. Then, as a safety precaution, we filled up a few buckets of water from the creek and dumped it on the bag.
After a long argument over who’s fault it was, I tried to fall asleep in a stinky, wet, and mud covered bag. I could not believe that he refused to give me his sleeping bag as compensation! I am pretty sure, I slept a total of 1 hour that entire weekend.