by Jim Cyr
When I was a boy, before concern for the environment was an issue, we use to burn our trash in a 50-gallon drum set on four cinder blocks in our back yard. I loved to watch the trash burn every night. The orange and red flames shooting up from that old drum would kindle my imagination with dreams of being a fireman. I pretended I was a firefighter rushing to a burning building to do battle with the flames and rescue people in distress. Or sometimes, as I stared at the flames, they seemed to be the undulating shapes of people doing a magical dance around the rim of the drum.
Every night I watched with envy as my older brother took the trash to the barrel to set it ablaze. I longed for the day when I could assume the sacred responsibility of “burner of the trash.” Then, one day, when my brother, who was ten years older then me, went off to college, the office of “fire starter—trash burner—fire tender” was passed along to me. With trembling, sweaty, outstretched hands I received my first pack of matches and my father’s admonition, “Don’t burn yourself!”
Anticipation, excitement, and pride filled my breast as I pulled the tan plastic trash can from under the shelf in the kitchen and carried it with grand ceremony to the great burning barrel in the back yard. I emptied the trash into the barrel and with the flick of a match set the trash ablaze.
I watched with awe as my first fire consumed the remains of the day’s kitchen waste, junk mail, and a couple of little green plastic army men I’d thrown in the trash to see how long it would take for them to melt. My first trash burning was a roaring success!
For a few weeks, all went well in my new role as priest of the pyre. My nightly conflagrations went off without a problem. Until one evening, as I was dropping the trash into the fire piece by piece, the flames set a piece of tissue ablaze while it was still in my hand. The quickly burning Kleenex scorched my fingers and I dropped the blazing tissue into the still full plastic trashcan from the kitchen.
The contents of the trashcan caught on fire. Thinking quickly, I grabbed the trashcan and dumped its blazing contents into our fire barrel.
“Whew!” I thought. “That was close!” And I sighed in relief. But then I spied the side of the trashcan. The heat from the flames had melted one side of the trash bin, sending rivulets of melted plastic down the side
of the can.
I thought my reign as king of combustion would come to a quick end if my parents saw the result of my carelessness. So, before I went inside with my melted mess, I devised a clever plan. When I came through the door into the kitchen, where my parents were sitting around the table playing cards with another couple, I turned the melted side of the trashcan toward me and carefully placed it back under the shelf with the burnt
side against the kitchen cabinet. No one seemed to notice the trauma I’d inflicted upon the trashcan.
And so it went for several weeks. I continued my nightly trash burning always careful to keep the melted side of the can out of sight of my parents. Since no one said anything, I thought the results of my pyrotechnics had gone undetected.
But along with the newspaper, junk mail, and old homework assignments that I burned each night, my conscience smoldered with guilt. Finally, when I could bear the weight of my deception no longer, I confessed my ruse to my mother. I can still see the grin on my mother’s face and hear the laughter in her voice when she said, “We were wondering how long it was going to take you to tell us.” Boy, did I feel foolish!
I learned an important lesson that day. Fooling with fire and fooling with dishonesty have a lot in common. Both can burn you!