That said i want you to imagine Your high school graduation and the parties thereof. I did not attend one of those parties. Instead four of my closest friends and i decided to sit around my house and play video games. yes, we were the geeks of the school, we had fun tohugh.

Anyway, We go bored. Sober and clean (no drugs) we could only play games so long. We needed somethign new to do, so we decided a bonfire might be nice, since a lot of people had done that recently. Well, from that central idea we added on. after about 20 mins we came to the following plan:

Grab the cans of flammable stuff (Wd-40 or 30 or something like that, i know, i'm a horrible guy not knowing my flammables) and go out to the steel shed about 3 houses down and like 1/2 a mile into the woods. We would then proceed to write stuff on the shed and then light it on fire after lighting a can up to be a flamethrower.

We get out there. I decide to just watch because, well, i have a bit more common sense than they do, and would have rejected if I myself didn't think fire was really cool.

They write their naughty words, and light the steel on fire. This is where it gets interesting.

First thing to happen, they didn't think the flammable substance would drip, local flora caught on fire. Easy enough to deal with though, we were near a stream. Second thing was the infamous question:

"Hey, i wonder what they keep in here?"

This is when i mention we are in Maine, where it is frozen tundra a third of the year, and many people keep a supply of kerosene or oil around, in case of an event like a bad ice storm we had in 1998.

Well, 2 of us went to get some water to put out hte fire on the ground, 2 went to see what was in the shed (the shed wasn made of steel and the flammable was already out on the side of it, there was only a slowly growing fire pool on the ground, about a foot from the enterance). I stayed put about 20 feet away, leaning against a tree, dazing out slightly, wondering if i should get some marshmallows.

Next thing i hear is a "s***" and the 2 investigators running. One dropped a can of flammable in the enterance while running.

inside was about 50 gallons of gasoline and 30 of kerosene, if what the neighbor told us later was true.

Well, i see them running, so i run too. During this time the fire is spreading, and consumes the can, making a small exploding-like sound. I look back from about 50 feet away and see the spreading flames, stop my friends, and they tell me whats inside. Well, the other 2 came back about then, and we yell to get away, and they don't hear us. I try again and catch their attention, they start to move away as the gas catches and they get thrown forward as the shed goes up.

We all end up being fine, the 2 closest to the shed got some first and a couple of second degree burns on their arms and neck, but nothing really bad.

This sounds like an HM to me due to the sheer stupidity of lighting a structure on fire without checking its contents, and that nothing would have happened if we hadn't checked. Also since it had a lethal potential.

Submitted on 03/14/2006

Submitted by: Chris
Reference:

Copyright © 2006 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
A funny story, Chris! You WERE old enough, and perhaps your friends SHOULD have checked! I will keep this as a PA!

Sheryl said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I like it, too. Spelling and grammar need a bit of a tidy but otherwise it's a funny story.

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