Sweetness Oh Booya, Friends

Donny Osmond is pretty cool

Last Saturday I was filming a group project on campus when somebody walked by that I thought I recognized. There was a huge boy scout activity taking place in the WILK (Student building plus other things) so a lot of people were there with their kids having fun and getting merit badges. Turns out I did recognize the guy with his kid walking by. As a matter of fact, it was Donny Osmond!

A guy from our group walked over, told him we were filming something for class and asked if he wouldn't mind helping out. You never really know what to expect when you meet an international super-star, but he was super cool! He didn't treat us like psycho weirdo fans at all. He just asked what we wanted him to say and delivered like a pro. We even got him to wink and say "I'm Donny Osmond and I support this message." Awesome.

Here's a little video I made of the clip we got from him. There's a link in that video to the completed class project if you're interested in that, too.

Committing arson. That’s a paddlin’

Old Jasper looks like a man ready to deliver. No malfeasance shall go unpaddled while he's on duty (awake).

You would think a fireman with a smoldering, near catastrophic child-felony a few feet away would mean business when he spoke about disciplinary action as well, but you'd be wrong.

When I was about nine years old my family lived in Layton, Utah (roughly 25 minutes north of Salt Lake City). It was a pretty nice neighborhood with a little agriculture going on here and there. One of my favorite things to do with my friends was play in the construction site that was located conveniently just behind our cul-de-sac. It was extraordinary what those construction folk would leave behind specifically for us kids to play with. Screws, wood, nail gun strips, super-bondo adhesive, mud, just to name a few. Another pass-time involved finding what you thought would become the bathroom of a new home and using it for its intended purpose. Many a story could be told of our times playing in the developing neighborhood, but only one story truly goes down in infamy.

One day while playing in the construction site with my friends Austin and Evan, (you know, I don't remember ever seeing actual workers there. Ever. How did those houses get built?) one of us produced a box of matches. I think Austin had it since his parents kept them in abundance and I remember being jealous that he could flick one off the box and send a tiny flaming projectile flying into the dirt. I think it's no surprise that little boys like fire. It also should not be surprising that little boys don't have the greatest capacity to plan for the future. Nor do they have very large bladders.

We typically took an alternate route home since the fence we hopped to get to the fields was too tall for us to climb over the opposite way. Taking this way involved walking through an enclosure roughly the size of half of a football field that was chock-full with very tall, very dead grass. Since we had matches to distract us, we didn't take our usual potty break in some poor chap's house frame. We continued lighting matches and throwing them on the ground, but due to the same distraction, we didn't realize the gravity of doing so while walking through a meadow of kindling.

The first match flew through the air like all the others, but for some reason fizzled out as soon as it hit earth. The second match was a little more rowdy, but we quickly stepped on it before the flames had a chance to take hold of some good fuel. Then I had a stroke of genius. "I wanna pee on one!" Partially because fire makes a neat fizzling sound when you douse it, partly because I really had to go, we lit a match and let it go for a few seconds. I extinguished the flames with great force. My friends, probably for the same reasons, decided they wanted to try it too. They each, in turn, put out their tiny infernos with ease.

We were delighted to see that water (of sorts) did indeed put out fire! We were glorious adventurer/scientists doing the world a grand service by continuing investigation on the most primal of elements. Then, in a moment of haste, we lit another match, threw it, and waited for someone to do the deed. This time, nobody had spoken dibbs on hydrant duty. The tiny flame was gaining ground at an alarming rate, so rather than deliberate over whose turn it was, we simultaneously made a feeble attempt at curbing what was now an eruption of fire, ash, and nine year old curse words.

By this time we were all too afraid to smother the fire with our feet, which most likely would have proven worthless. "We need water!! We need a lot of water!!!" Instead of knocking on the door of an ominously close house to summon the help of a responsible, rational adult, we ran nearly two blocks back to my house to get the water. On the way we each prophesied our demise at the hands of our parents if we didn't put that fire out.

The first thing that came to mind was a pitcher of water. But I had timed it before, they take at least an hour to fill and have got to weigh about thirty pounds. By the time it was filled and lugged over there my house would have been aflame too; that option was out. So I did the next best thing. I grabbed our three biggest cups and we each filled them. As it happens, those cups had been in our family for a while, and still are! Behold:

As pictured, the once brimming cup of water was missing half of its contents after sprinting back to the site of the unintended arson. Austin's cup was in the same condition and Evan, cup in hand, chickened out completely, going straight to his basement right next door.

By the time we got back to the field the fire was ten times as big. There was also a woman standing in the street watching it. For a fleeting moment I thought maybe this lady really likes fire, she might just be watching it for fun and would be ecstatic to meet the creators of the blaze. That desperate idea immediately left me when I saw the look on that woman's face. We ran up next to her and she asked if we saw who started the fire. Then she saw the pitiful amount of water we each carried and quickly connected the pieces. She told us the fire department had been called and we were to stay put. She also denied our offer to throw our water on the fire.

Having been in a pinch before, and knowing full well what would happen if we got stuck with the blame, we slowly edged closer to some nearby RV's to prepare for our escape. Our opportunity came when another neighbor came out and distracted the first lady. We ran for it.

I went back to my house, Austin went back to his. My parents probably remember well the time I ran in the house with eyes the size of frisbees and asked them if they had heard about the fire. Again, not thinking very far into the future, I reasoned that if I were the one to tell them about the fire then there was no way they would accuse me of starting it. Air-tight alibi, right? I didn't take into account the fact that when my parents and I got back to the fire the lady who called the fire department would immediately recognize me, the firemen, having the fire contained, would be there with plenty of time to ask questions and I wouldn't be able to claim homelessness having my parents right by my side. Austin had a better idea. "Mom! Dad! Eric started a fire!"

There were a few factors that escalated what would have been a harmless brush fire next to some dirt to a full-fledged emergency. For one thing, it was a freakin' brush fire! Another was the line of trees headed for some houses. Another was a very long, pretty old wooden fence lining the backyards of about a dozen houses. Another, and the most imminent, were the propane tanks attached to the RV's that aided our first attempt at escape. Two RV's, two ten-gallon tanks each.

Here's a diagram of our neighborhood at the time. Also, a video of what happens when a propane tank explodes. (Searching YouTube for "propane tank explosion" yielded some funny results. Every video has southern accents, guns, and a lot of cursing. Uncanny how closely it resembles my family...minus the accents and a little bit of cursing.)

The neighborhood back then

I don't know exactly how close and for how long a fire needs to be in close proximity to propane tanks for them to explode, but I am very thankful we didn't find out that day.

When everything was settled down the three of us kids were gathered together for a talkin' to. (We drug poor Evan back in to the mix in an attempt to mitigate some of the punishment.) Up to that point I had never believed anyone that said playing with matches is dangerous. I mean, had they done it before? How could something so fun be dangerous? I believed the fireman who echoed that counsel that day.

The fireman gave us each stern looks, a finger pointing/shaking at and sentenced us to a week long "Fire-Bug" school where they would attempt to deprogram our fire starter tendencies. My parents grounded me for a month, but I never heard from those fireman again.

That's how I found out fireman don't make very good disciplinarians.