A History of This Kind of Thing

Promoted from the comments section of yesterday's post involving sticking birthday candles in the toaster:

Actually, I was using the toaster because I was 4 and had already been punished for playing with matches. The way I figured it though, the toaster was acceptable and a source of much needed fire for the candles on my bear's birthday cake.

Later, when this proved also to unacceptable to my parents, I figured the cigarette lighter in the car would also work. I out clevered myself there though and tried to light a sparkler in the front seat of my fathers 65 Thunderbird. I remember thinking it would be fun to light the sparkler, that the car lighter would work (having been chased off matches and the toaster), I remember pushing the lighter in, watching it heat, touching it when it popped out with the heating element a wonderful cherry-red, touching the sparkler to the element, waiting, waiting, waiting and being totally and completely surprised by the unexpected thing which happened next.
The sparkler lit.
I have no idea why this surprised me since it was the goal of the experiment, but I was so shocked when the front seat of the car being filled with white-hot thermite sparks I screamed and .... dropped the sparkler onto the floor of the car! It immediately went under the passengers seat, hissing and burning the whole time. I was about 4 or 5 and had seen enough tv to know what was going to happen next. The car was going to explode. I ran out of the car, locked the doors and shut them (thinking maybe that the explosion couldn’t get out of a locked car??? I don’t’ remember what I was thinking other than “aahaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!”) and ran behind a nearby tree with my fingers in my ears waiting for the car to explode and trying to figure out what I would tell my father. Fortunately the T-Bird was made of sterner stuff and failed to explode. Days went by while I worried they would figure out what I did (and while I waited for the car to explode ‘cause that sparkler didn’t go immediately and maybe there was a similar delayed reaction with the car). Eventually I got back into the car and found the sparkler melted into the (plastic-based) fabric under the front seat. I fished it out and threw it away and never, ever touched the cigarette lighter again.

Because that was the week my father, the welder, brought home his oxy-acetylene torch…