Fire is a huge attraction for young men. The idea of having their own fire circle around which to gather and, well, make fire, appeals to them on a deep and intrinsically male level.
When Zorak was a young man, he and his cousins were permitted to have such a circle at Granny's. It was composed of carefully chosen rocks (it's all sandstone all the time - take your pick), laid out in a special place (far enough from the house not to arouse concern)... and they tended to this fire in the evenings, summer and winter. They watched it, sometimes for no other reason than just because they could. Eventually, the immediate area failed to profer more fuel and with the extra work of gathering wood came the extra ambition to do stuff with the fire. You know, science. Sort of.
So they started by finding an old tin can to hold... things. Then they went in search of things to burn, erm, test. Yes, test. The, um, experiments, went something like this:
*put turkey droppings in can, and place on the fire*
"Ew. That smells bad!"
*put pine sap in can, place on fire*
"Whoa! Did you see that? Wow, when it gets hot enough, it just bursts into flames!"
*repeat pine sap experiment for a while with similar results*
"Hey, how about pine sap and turkey poop?"
*in go the droppings and more sap*
"Wow! That burns fast AND it smells bad!"
*someone throws plastic into the mix*
"Oooooo, look at the smoke!"
*yes, now it's turkey droppings, pine sap and plastic - the ultimate concoction of smoke, smell and violent flames*
"Oooooooo! Ahhhhhhh! Ewwwwwww!"
*what about (pause for drama) urine? With that many boys in a field at night, there were no lack of volunteers...*
"Oh, GROSS! That just smells bad! EW!"
(I have to interject here, I have no idea what they were expecting at that point.)
Eventually, the contents of the tin can evaporated, the smells subsided, and the evening wore into a quiet companionable silence. Of sorts. This was a group of young men, after all...
And people say there are no rites of passage any longer? P'shaw! There's always the fire circle on a quiet summer night...
Kiss those babies!
~Dy
5 comments:
Oh, man, I'm choking on my coffee, Dy! This is just too familiar! My daughter had a birthday party when she turned 16 in July, and she had a boy-girl party that culminated in a bonfire and marshmallow roast. She and the female members of the group were all very confused about the number of "things" the boys wanted to throw into the fire, although they weren't quite as creative as Zorak and his cousins were. They mostly threw in things like pine cones, candy wrappers, potato chips, a few of their hairs. I think if the girls hadn't been there, they may have found a creative way to extinguish the fire.
Oh, yes. We too have the fire circle, and I am all too familiar with this sort of thing. Yes indeed. You just wait till y'all get your own fire circle at your new home. As you recall, our kids caught and cooked crawdads over their fire circle! And...sure...we all knew the urine thing was comin'....but come to think of it, I'll bet they didn't say, "urine". Too funny. So good to catch up w/ya last night!
TOO stinkin' funny!!!(pun intended!).
LOL!!!!
You make me feel better about my budding pyromaniac. Melted carpet and all.
What a great post! I suppose my time is coming too- with the boys being so...well... boyish!
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