Song of the Day

Lonely At The Top by Randy Newman

Word of the Day

Essive - A grammatical case indicating a temporary state of being

The first stupid thing I remember doing was burning myself. It was one of many instances where my body became an ad-hoc laboratory for testing a dumb idea. I have the kind of un-natural curiosity that nature should have eliminated a thousand generations ago. For instance, raccoons are curious about shiny things, but they don't eat shards of glass. Crows are inquisitive, but they fly away from oncoming traffic, not into it. This basic rule -don't hurt yourself- is fundamental for any species that survives. Survival of the fittest, right?

No.

Survival of the foolish. Because I'm alive, and I may be the World's first idiot savant who's gift is actually idiocy. An idiot-idiot savant. Witness my capacity to ignore clear signals from my own nerve endings, override common sense, and contravene the instincts afforded lesser creatures.

Here is a count down of ten stupid things I've done. Enjoy, and do not repeat.

Stupid #10: Touch The Fire

I was four years old, riding in the car with mom and dad. This was, like, 1975, so I'm pretty sure we were in a Volkswagon Thing with no seat belts. I was climbing around the front seat playing with gauges while dad smoked cigarettes with his left hand and steered with his right knee. He puffed plumes of smoke out the window as mom marveled at the passing greenery. I entertained myself with the dashboard, and after becoming bored with the radio and glove box, I discovered the cigarette lighter. Hey now, what's this?

I pushed the knob in, and a couple seconds later it popped out. Like a toaster. Push it in, it pops out. Push in, pops out. Even more fascinating was the orange spiral that glowed in its center. I knew this was what my dad used to light cigarettes. I'd seen him do it moments before. I passed the red hot coil over my arm. It was soft and warm. I held it up to my eyeball. It was hypnotically beautiful. I puckered my mouth and pretended it was a tube of lip stick, then glided it millimeters from my lips. That felt nice.

It may have been the first time in my life I was smitten with technology. This was a remarkable device. With one touch, it heated to several hundred degrees. Fire, at my finger-tips.

Fire... At my finger tips.

Hmm. The heat felt wonderful over my arm. It's glowing spiral mesmerized my pupils. Its warmth kissed my lips from a few millimeters. I paused. Be careful here. What do I really know about fire? On my left, dad puffed happily on a cig. To my right, mother gazed wistfully at the setting sun. So, fire converted tobacco into pleasure. Fire also floated in the sky, and gave life to every thing on this planet. What was the sun, after all, but a giant cigarette lighter in the sky.

I wanted to know fire. Its magnetic allure beckoned me into a secret World. Touch me, it whispered. What I expected to experience was a cross between Michelangelo's Creation Of Adam and the moment E.T. touched fingers with that boy. Me and the cigarette lighter, reaching across the Kosmos to unite in wonder.

I pushed the cigarette lighter in. When it popped back out, I turned it around, and smiled. The metal coil pulsed an inviting shade of orange. I stiffened the pointer finger on my right hand and steadied the cigarette lighter with my left hand. I plunged my finger into the lighter, and for about half a second, my plan worked. My finger and fire were one. I was touching the untouchable.

Then, the nerve endings began their dissent.

A few million watts of agony flooded my phalanges. I noticed the pain had a source. It was located in the tip of my pointer finger, right where I was touching a cigarette lighter. All the sensitivity in my body compressed into that point.

Obviously, this is not happening, I protested. It contradicts what I know about fire. Fire is soothing and beautiful. This crucifixion, this Chinese finger trap must be a hallucination. In a moment, it will vanish. Like now! Or now?

Why isn't it vanishing? Why would fire do this to me? The pain knocked the wind out of me. Hell imploded in my finger, a slow-motion crater into the bone. Under the cuticle time stopped, then erupted out my throat like a stellar event. A Stupid-Nova. I let out a scream so primal our car time-traveled. Under my molten nail a wormhole opened, and I was joined in 11 dimensions with all the other imbeciles in history. A legion of dolts so dim and witless we accounted for dark energy, country music, and Battlefield Earth.

The scream finally alerted my parents to the nimrod betwixt them. My father's eyes widened in dismay. He flicked his cigarette out the window, and pulled over. Mother gasped, and immediately separated my finger from the cigarette lighter. Wow, I thought. It hadn't occurred to me to do that, and I really appreciated the way it decreased the pain.

"Honey, what on Earth... ?", mother sung in disbelief. My parents began searching the car for more clues, as though the cigarette lighter in my one hand and the grotesque burn on the other couldn't be the whole story. It was a tough moment for them. They were stunned. The sheer stupidity, the staggering foolishness, offered them a hint of things to come. I was four years old. I'd tried to light my body on fire. What would I do at fourteen? Twenty four? Reflected in their bewildered faces, I saw myself for the olympic dip shit I was.

I filled the car with a deafening wail. Drool spilled out the corner of my mouth, tears gushed from my eyes. My face contorted into the sort of expression most actors reserve for existential tragedies; War, cataclysm. Disfigured by embarrassment and pain, I finally bargained.

Please God, just put it back. Put the pain back on the outside of my body, and the fire back inside the cigarette lighter. Undo this, and I will make a different choice. I will put the lighter back, and never take it out again.

But God didn't put it back. My finger throbbed, I fantasized about amputation. Mom and dad rushed me to a convenience store up the block. By the time my blistered digit was packed in ice, I'd lapsed into depression.

There is no God, I realized. Just stupid people.

Mom and dad hugged me. They rocked me back and forth to calm me down. I could tell I'd frightened them. Because, while I had used my own free will to thrust an appendage into a cigarette lighter, they were helpless. Helpless to save me from my stupidity. Helpless to protect me from the inevitable results of my moronic mind. And that, I blinked, must suck.

Dad pulled back onto the road, mom bandaged my finger. They traded a knowing look, and let out the weary sigh every loving parent knows. *Exhale* 'What can you do?'