Playing with Fire

Chace Anderson

11/22/08

Written as part of punishment for trying to spit fire

    If you have ever had the thought of trying to spit fire like you see on TV, here is some advice, don’t. It is very dangerous and you could easily get killed or seriously injure yourself and maybe even burn down your house. Besides, the professionals don’t use gasoline. They use a type of alcohol that isn’t toxic to your body. My friend and I, being the smart teenagers we are, tried to spit fire with gasoline and it lit our face on fire in the process. We were lucky enough to escape with only second degree burns on our face. The doctors told us there could be minor scarring but we were very lucky. Other people are not so lucky and have burned to death in fires or lost their life from burns in their respiratory system by destroying their lungs. If you do not die you could be burned badly enough that you will have terrible looking scars from the burns that will last for the rest of your life. So first things first, you can very easily die from burns on your skin or in your lungs. When my friend and I spit fire we could have inhaled the flames on accident and completely burned up our lungs. Often when you inhale the flames your throat will start to hurt and you could have trouble breathing. Usually you wouldn’t die just from the burns but from inhaling the flames and killing your lung tissue. Gasoline burns are bad because you can’t put it out with water that just spreads it. You must stop, drop and roll to put out the flames. I bet you didn’t know this but the actual liquid gas itself isn’t flammable, it is the fumes around it.

    Many people each year get killed from fire accidents or burns from fire. When you get burned there is always a chance that you might inhale the flames and burn up your lungs. If you do in fact inhale the fire you could have major problems in your respiratory system, like not being able to breathe. Usually you will experience sore throat or have trouble breathing. People who accidentally inhale the flames could die on the spot from just completely frying their lungs and running out of air. The fire could also go up your nose and into your nasal passage. This burns all your nose hair out and makes you more vulnerable to sickness. Most people don’t realize this but your nose hairs are very helpful in stopping bacteria from getting into your body.

    People also intentionally inhale toxic fumes just to get high. Purposely "huffing" fumes can lead to brain damage and could also severely damage your lungs. Sources of fumes can be found all over your house. It is not just gasoline fumes that can kill you. There are many teenagers out there who are into huffing. There are a number of things they use to get high. Such as if you sniff white out or Sharpies. Paint is also a source for people to use to huff. These fumes are also extremely flammable and catch fire in a heartbeat. Some of the side effects to inhaling the fumes are headache, nausea, and dizziness. It is just common sense not to intentionally inhale toxic fumes that can destroy your body and your brain. If you continue to huff the fumes eventually it can and will kill you. If you feel like killing your brain cells some more go ahead and keep huffing. Whatever it is you are using just leave your friends and family out of it. Even if your friends do it use your head and don’t kill your brain cells by huffing toxic fumes. Just tell them no and walk away. Be the bigger man, or woman. You might think to yourself that getting high is harmless and just makes you feel good. That is completely wrong! It kills many brain cells whenever you intentionally inhale something. Also, if you ever go to school high your teachers can tell and you will get in major trouble. In many cases people have often died from inhaling fumes from whatever one too many times. If you still want to continue to huff fumes after everything thing I said then I say it’s too late for you.

    Playing with fire is very dangerous and is not something anyone should think about doing. If you try to spit fire using gasoline it you could easily die from the burns, the fumes and also the house burning down. The gasoline fumes are highly flammable and one little spark could cause a disaster. Since many houses are made with wood it can be very easy to completely destroy your house. Wood catches on fire quickly and once it starts it is hard to stop for awhile. When my friend and I spit fire we could have burned down the entire house with the huge fireballs coming out of our mouths. We used gasoline and that can help the fire to get bigger and go for a longer amount of time. Fire has claimed the victims inside burning houses numerous times since the beginning of time itself. This includes the modern houses of today or the thatch roof of our early ancestor’s houses. Fire is very dangerous and hot. The average temperature of fire is somewhere around 2372 degrees F, which is extremely hot! A flame is an exothermic, self-sustaining, oxidizing chemical reaction producing energy and glowing hot matter, of which a tiny portion is plasma. Our parents are always telling us not to play with fire or else you will burn something down or hurt yourself. Well, believe it or not they have a reason! It’s for your own safety not just to make your angry. So the next time you should listen and don’t blow them off like they are idiots because their job is to make sure you are safe and don’t spit fire. Mine and Dylan’s pyro side took over and we did spit fire but we are extremely lucky we didn’t burn down his house. The fireball coming out of our mouth easily reached the roof and could have caught it on fire and then the next thing you know the house is engulfed in flames. As I said we are lucky nothing like that happened and we only had a couple burns on our face. You should never play with fire for risk of burning something down or somebody and getting beat by your history class teacher. I definitely think that Dylan and I deserved getting called stupid by teachers and students we don’t even know. I believe the message of how stupid that was is forever drilled into our minds and we will not ever do that again. Many things can start a fire, like faulty wiring at your house, or spitting fire. All of these can result in death of your family members or your house being destroyed and possibly the rest of your neighborhood. If you have any gasoline in your garage once the flames reach that it only takes a spark to light up that gas. Then I think it is pretty much over for your house you can just forget about it. You can’t use water to put it out because water only spreads the fire into a bigger fire. That is a little known fact that can just make it worse when you think you are trying to help out. Gasoline as well as being quite flammable is also highly explosive so that it makes that much more of a fuel to the fire. Gasoline should only be used for machinery and to make our cars run, not to be used to spit fire with. You know those warning labels on all cans of gasoline? I’m here to tell you that they put those on there for a reason, not just to make it look pretty. They specifically say extremely flammable keep away from fires and people who use it to spit fire.

    That brings us to our next topic which is lifetime scarring from burns. A countless number of people have been scarred for life from fires. Sometimes it wasn’t their fault, possibly an accident at a campground. But in other cases it was completely their fault like they were messing around with gasoline at a fire or doing a dumb thing like spitting fire. My friend and I have a burn on our face from spitting fire that could and probably will scar us. Luckily our burns are pretty small; others aren’t so lucky and have their bodies completely scarred. As I said earlier fire is about 2372 degrees F so imagine that all over your body. Fire that burns that hot is going to leave a huge nasty looking scar all over you. In our case the fire was only on my face but then my best friend Dylan tackled me. While we were on the floor his face caught on fire as well. You know who your best friend is when he is willing to risk his life to put the fire out on you. He is like family to me, like my brother just separated at birth. But anyway you can easily be scarred for life from a fire accident. You need to very careful whenever you are around fires, no matter how big or small it is. When you get burned it can actually kill the tissue in your skin and scar you forever. That is in the extremely severe burns cases though, such as when you get a third degree burn. The burns like that leave your skin looking so disgusting it’s hard to look at it. In this day and age we have medical procedures that can get rid of most of the scar. Although you can have those processes done, it can cost you an arm and a leg for it. Some people are unable to afford something like scar removal so they just have to tough it out and live with it. Then again you could always try some home remedies but they are not nearly as effective as a real doctor working on you. Just remember that when you are around fire be careful because you could end up looking like you have been cooked alive.

    So now that I have told you all about the dangers of fire you know how bad it can be to play with fire. It can expose you to toxic gasoline fumes which can kill your brain cells. Or you can simply burn down your house and your neighbors in the process. Also you can have lifetime scarring and make you look disgusting. In addition to all that you can DIE! So the next time you see someone on TV spitting fire I am here to tell you from personal experience don’t do it, it hurts!!

Note from Poppy

Chace is my 13 year old grandson. He was not seriously hurt in this little stunt. Most importantly though he learned a valuable lesson.