This evening I brought 20 years of tax returns up from the basement, popped them in the Weber kettle out back, doused them with lighter fluid and torched them, as you do.
Not out of spite. I just didn’t want to wear out the shredder. I didn’t want to just pitch them either, and cooking them was the best alternative. I suppose I could have been truly fearless and dumped them in the trash. Come to think of it, why didn’t I? Oh, wait, social security numbers, identity theft, that’s right.
Instead, I faced my biggest fear, the crippling fear of being set on fire while burning your 1997 tax forms in a Weber kettle. BBQphobia. IRSWTFBBQphobia.
It was hard, and scary, and it took me an HOUR and a HALF to burn it all, including the Turbotax CD that got in there by accident. (Burned right up.)
The worst part was that there was a slight wind, and the wind picked up flaming bits of W2s and launched them toward the neighbors’ house. The neighbors that barbeque non-stop in summer. The ones who are one with the embers. Whereas I was chasing the embers around with a stick knocking them out of the sky before they could leave my yard.
The fire almost got me once because it hypnotized me. “Wow.Look at that. Let me poke at this tax form. Wow. That flame just touched my hand and it didn’t hurt.” Then I woke up and realized that’s how the fire gets you. That;’s when I got a longer tree branch to poke the fire with. I know, wooden branches are probably not the best pokers. However, both birdbaths are sanitized now because ever time it caught on fire I doused it in the birdbath, and the water would boil for a second.
I’m afraid of fire, which I think is perfectlly reasonable. I’ve heard two people this week say they are afraid of cruises. They both couldn’t go on a cruise because if something went wrong, they’d just be out on the ocean.
At the time I heard that I thought, “No, you go to the lifeboats. Then you go to the helicopter or the coast guard boat.” But to each his own, I suppose. I don’t trust myself around fire, they don’t trust the Carnival company around the ocean.
4 responses to “Fear of Fire”
Jay had saved every piece of paper that had come into his possession since high school. When he moved from Texas to the Hudson Valley, he actually moved several large boxes of UNOPENED junk mail. His den/office was so cluttered with paper that cleaning it out I found five dead computers I didn’t know were there. No way I could get it all to the recycle center, so I started to burn it — in the fireplace.
After about three days of burning, I walked outside and looked up, and was horrified to find burning pages shooting out of the chimney, and landing on the roof, and floating into the woods.
I could have burned the freakin’ house down!
I ended up renting a dumpster, which meant I had to inspect every sheet. I loved Jay and had accepted his foibles when he was alive, but I swore at him a lot that month.
~~Silk! Yes! Same here. Carbon paper can be dangerous.
Wait. Aren’t you the one who burned the voodoo flag in my BBQ grill?
You hide your fear well, Grasshopper.
I was there for the burning of the Swiss flag. I believe I didn’t start the fire.