I Light Up My Life 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
I think I should preface this tale of idiocy by informing the gentle reader of my background. At the time of the tale I was a second or third year student at the prestigious University of California, Berkeley. However, I was a liberal arts major (read: not a science major) who did not always pay the greatest attention in his chemistry classes (either in college or high school).
I had heard somewhere that if a liquid has a low evaporation point, it will also have a low flash point. Believing this to be true, I bet my two best friends that I could set my hand on fire without harming myself. So it was that on a fateful day during winter break, I decided to pour some rubbing alcohol on my hand and set that ablaze at my friend's house. Since it was my friend's house, he asked that I perform my feat in the bathroom, over the sink as a precaution. (I had earlier waved off the suggestion of a fire extinguisher as an safety precaution.)
With my two best friends beside me, I doused my right hand with liberal amounts of the alcohol over the sink, and proceeded to set my hand ablaze with a lighter. Since alcohol is a good fuel for fire, my hand was soon a glowing like that of the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four comic books. What differentiated me from Johnny Storm was that while he may not have felt the pain and heat from his body being afire, I did. That is, I felt the flame bite into my hand. With my left hand, I reached across my body to turn on the cold water and darted my right hand under the tap.
Needless to say, my friends found my predicament quite hilarious and laughed at me from about the time I exclaimed, "Oh, sh*t!" (which was basically right after my hand went "whoosh") to well after I pulled my slightly cooked and cooled right hand out from under the tap. To add insult to injury, I was now out quite a bit of money to these to huckster, along with quite a bit of dignity.
Although I survived this incident with a bruised ego and a pinked right hand, I am sure that in the future I will fulfill my potential and prove to my detractors that I am a true Darwin Award candidate!
Submitted on 09/12/2002
Submitted by:
George
Reference:
Personal Account
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