I am favorably inclined towards collecting. I have a long and vivid history of collecting things that serve absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever; such as funny magazine adverts and Boys2Men CDs. At one stage during my colourful teen years I was collecting an alarming total of 23 different things which, for the sake of my dignity, I shall refrain from naming. I am no longer a “collector” as such but I do have a fondness for hording, so last Saturday I decided it was time for a thorough spring clean.
I ended up throwing out roughly 2 metric tons of arbitrary items I’d been saving for the last 7 years, including a wooden candle holder in the shape of a foot with a raised big toe that is ugly enough to call into question whether I should ever be allowed to shop for household items unsupervised. (Don’t judge me; I’m just as horrified as you are!!) At the end of my spring clean, I had a full garbage bag of old bank statements I wanted to get rid of. And, since I don’t own a shredder, I hatched a brilliant plan to burn the papers… at least, it seemed brilliant at the time.
My landlord made a fire for me in his large outdoor braai (BBQ) and, in a matter of seconds I proceeded to nearly burn the entire neighborhood down. To understand how this happened, you need to know that I was, at that stage, blissfully unaware of my own incompetence in the area of “foresight” henceforth I merely plonked the garbage bag down on top of the flaming inferno. I figured the bag would melt around the papers and shrink, keeping them together but in the real world, it took only 2.4 nanoseconds for the bin bag to singe into nonexistence, leaving a giant pile of rapidly burning papers exposed. To. The. Howling. Wind!
“Hindsight” is a Latin word which roughly translated means “as you approached the fire, did the fact that the wind was whipping your hair into a hairdo remarkably reminiscent of something out of the 80s, REALLY not even vaguely alert you to the dangers of burning papers in those weather conditions?” Yet somehow I managed to be genuinely oblivious to the gusting winds, that is until a few blazing pieces of paper took off and floated towards the nearby foliage.
At this point I was acutely aware that this was a very, very bad idea - given the strong winds and my inability to operate a fire under even “ideal” conditions without singeing off most of my eyebrows. I quickly attempted to restore order to the chaos by wishing I had never done this. When that failed, I tried blowing the fire out. I know, I know; in retrospect, fire + small pieces of paper + air = I’m an idiot! But in the heat of the moment, it seemed like a viable option. After that I panicked and slammed the braai grill down over the papers to prevent them from all blowing away and setting my flat and the neighbor’s dog on fire. Sadly I merely succeeded in instantly launching a hundred blazing paper flakes into the lower atmosphere. Houston, we had liftoff!
Fifteen strenuous minutes later, I had only just managed to avert disaster and was standing there covered in ash and looking quite shell-shocked; like I’d just won the Miss Pyromaniac Pageant. The only evidence of my harrowing escapade was the thin layer of smoldering grey ash covering the garden, but in the right conditions – like under the cover of night – no one would ever know I’d singlehandedly almost converted a stack of bank statements into a weapon of mass destruction.
My landlord made a fire for me in his large outdoor braai (BBQ) and, in a matter of seconds I proceeded to nearly burn the entire neighborhood down. To understand how this happened, you need to know that I was, at that stage, blissfully unaware of my own incompetence in the area of “foresight” henceforth I merely plonked the garbage bag down on top of the flaming inferno. I figured the bag would melt around the papers and shrink, keeping them together but in the real world, it took only 2.4 nanoseconds for the bin bag to singe into nonexistence, leaving a giant pile of rapidly burning papers exposed. To. The. Howling. Wind!
“Hindsight” is a Latin word which roughly translated means “as you approached the fire, did the fact that the wind was whipping your hair into a hairdo remarkably reminiscent of something out of the 80s, REALLY not even vaguely alert you to the dangers of burning papers in those weather conditions?” Yet somehow I managed to be genuinely oblivious to the gusting winds, that is until a few blazing pieces of paper took off and floated towards the nearby foliage.
At this point I was acutely aware that this was a very, very bad idea - given the strong winds and my inability to operate a fire under even “ideal” conditions without singeing off most of my eyebrows. I quickly attempted to restore order to the chaos by wishing I had never done this. When that failed, I tried blowing the fire out. I know, I know; in retrospect, fire + small pieces of paper + air = I’m an idiot! But in the heat of the moment, it seemed like a viable option. After that I panicked and slammed the braai grill down over the papers to prevent them from all blowing away and setting my flat and the neighbor’s dog on fire. Sadly I merely succeeded in instantly launching a hundred blazing paper flakes into the lower atmosphere. Houston, we had liftoff!
Fifteen strenuous minutes later, I had only just managed to avert disaster and was standing there covered in ash and looking quite shell-shocked; like I’d just won the Miss Pyromaniac Pageant. The only evidence of my harrowing escapade was the thin layer of smoldering grey ash covering the garden, but in the right conditions – like under the cover of night – no one would ever know I’d singlehandedly almost converted a stack of bank statements into a weapon of mass destruction.
I don’t know if I want to laugh or whether this should give cause for much concern. Lol
ReplyDeleteGreat piece of work Julie, keep it up.
Andy
You make me so happy. Let us idiot ninjas join force!
ReplyDeleteBrilliant!!!! Nothing like experience to learn the art of firemaking!!!
ReplyDeleteBrilliantly done! I can actually see you doing this. Thanks for making me laugh.
ReplyDelete