Burning down the toilet.

When I was 8 or 9 years old, I locked myself in the bathroom at my grandpa's house and went through the cabinets. I looked for anything that said FLAMMABLE on the label. When I had collected a few cans and bottles with this warning on them, I began trying to start a fire in the toilet. I figured since I was doing it in the toilet, it would be safe, because the toilet was full of water and could be flushed.

I'd spray or pour a flammable product into the toilet, and then drop a match into the water. Each time, the match would go out with quick sssst sound, and I'd repeat the process.

Sssst!

I did this a number of times in a few minutes, each time with the same result. I decided to give it one more shot. This time I would go all out. I dispensed a very large amount of shaving gel into the bowl, and then to that I added more of each of the other products. I lit a match, and dropped it into the toilet.

Whoosh!

A huge fireball shot out of the toilet and into my face. I jumped back, spun around, and looked in the mirror, sure I was going to be hideously deformed by burns that must have been too intense to hurt very much. Instead, I found that I looked the same, though a tiny bit of my hair had been singed into tiny brown lumps. I was shocked that such a huge fireball to the face did so little damage, and kept wondering if the Freddy Krueger burn scars would appear as I stared into the mirror.

And then I smelled the smoke.

I turned around, and saw the toilet paper on the dispenser near the toilet was burning. Worse, my grandpa had shag-carpet cover on the lid of the toilet, and it was also in flames. Panic hit me, and I grabbed a towel and began frantically smacking at the flames. I was terrified that everything adults said about fire was going to come true, and I was going to burn down the whole house. Relief hit me when I put the fire out, but then terror struck once again: what was I going to do with the evidence? I took the cover, the ash-covered towel, and the toilet paper all outside and threw it over the fence, into my grandpa's front yard. I knew they would find it eventually, but there was heavy foliage where I threw it, and I hoped it wouldn't be found soon.

Then I went back to the living room, and sat on the couch watching TV with my cousins as if nothing had happened.

A few minutes later, my grandpa appeared.

"Who was playing with matches?"

Nobody said anything.

"I know somebody was playing with matches, because I can smell it in the bathroom."

My mom and my aunt came in, and my grandpa told them that one of us was playing with matches. We were supposed to go to the pool that day, but they told us if we didn't confess, we wouldn't get to go.

"You won't get in trouble," my grandpa told us, "I just want to know who did it. That's very dangerous."

"It was Ruben!" I said.

"No, it wasn't!" shouted my shocked cousin.

I continued to lay the blame on my cousin for the rest of the day, and he continued to deny it. We didn't get to go to the pool.

A few days later, when I was getting a haircut, the lady cutting my hair asked if I had burned it.

"No," I said, looking at my mom in the mirror and wondering if she could hear us.

"It looks like you burnt it," she said.

"No," I said, "That's just dry hair stuff."

"Oh," she said, almost definitely not believing me.

Maybe it was some sort of cosmic payback when, a few years later, my friend blamed me for setting a knife on fire in the closet of my fifth grade class.

Marty and the contraband.

Through the complex bartering system used by the denizens of the fifth grade, I somehow ended up with a small pocket knife. When we were young, knives are very appealing simply because we weren't supposed to have them. Also, they were good to have in case we ever found ourselves trapped in the wilderness, struggling to survive against the forces of nature. My knife was dirty, small, and dull, but I chose to believe it was a useful tool nonetheless.

The goods possessed by young traders like ourselves were always in a transitory state. Most things brought to school were not held on to long by one person. It was only natural that at some point Marty would want my knife. He traded me a sack of ninja turtles for the folding blade.

On the day our transaction occurred, Marty also acquired another piece of contraband from another of our friends, Wayne, who offered Marty a cigarette lighter. Again, another incredibly useful item should one find themselves in a situation where death is on the line.

Death is seldom on the line in 5th grade, though, so Marty did what he could to utilize both items to the best of his ability. He went into the closet in our classroom and called my name in a hushed voice, signalling for me to watch him. He was about to perform an act of ultimate bravery. Marty set the handle of the knife on fire with the lighter.

"What's that?" the teacher's aide asked. "It smells like something burning!"

We were all inconsistent back-stabbers back then, occasionally defending our friends, and occasionally reveling in their misfortune. This would be one of the latter. I jumped from my seat and ran to the closet. Marty had thrown the knife under a pillow and was fanning the air, trying to make it less visibly smoke-filled. I picked up the pillow and grabbed the knife, which had partially melted into the floor.

"Marty set this knife on fire!" I shouted, gleeful.

Without hesitation, Marty pointed his finger at me and screamed that I had done it.

The teacher's aide had seen me run into the closet after she had smelled the smoke, so I assumed there was no possible way she would believe Marty. I was wrong. She brought us both down to the vice principal's office, and gave him the burnt knife and the lighter, which she had found under a coat in the closet. Marty was already sobbing like a little girl, while I was simply angry. Marty tearily continued to claim that I had done it, while I continued to tell him what really happened.

"Maybe I should call the police and have them fingerprint the knife. Is that what you want? Do you want me to call the police?"

"Please! Please!" sobbed Marty, "Please don't call the police! Oh my god, please!"

Even in 5th grade, I knew he wasn't going to call the police. I told him that he should.

"Oh my god, please, please, no!" pleaded Marty.

"Please, call them, Marty set the knife on fire and I shouldn't be in here. Call them so I don't have to be in trouble for something I didn't do anymore."

We sat in the office for the entire remainder of the day. Marty never confessed, and the vice principal never called the cops.

A week later, I got called into the office again. The vice principal said he had interviewed Wayne, and "I know the whole story now, I just want to hear it from you."

I stuck to my story, though I never told him that the knife was at one point mine, and before that it had belonged to Wayne. That didn't really seem necessary.

Neither one of us ever got in any trouble besides the day in the office. I stopped being Marty's friend, though, and he wasn't allowed to trade stuff with us anymore.