it's amazing sometimes how one little tidbit of information, in this case, Collin the quitter's original story about his inability to safely handle chemicals, can unlock so many (painful) memories (of doom). I've already shared one thrilling tale of destruction arising from the misuse of chemicals at the workplace, but my sister's comment on THAT story (about HCL) forced me to remember another wee tale buried deep within my evil brain. It's an event that occurred during my childhood that I feel compelled to share with you all. Before we get too deep into the nuts n' bolts of the story, though, I should introduce (to you) the main characters...

You all know me. Well, at least you know that I'm writing the story. Failing that, my name is Derek and I maintain this blog. Anyway, I've probably mentioned my friend Ryan before. No, this is not the Ryan with the limp whom I introduced in the "running like Hell from spittle-chick" story, this would be the Ryan whom I had been friends with from 4th grade until...Well, a couple of years ago. We no longer speak to one another, but that's neither here nor there. For the purposes of THIS story, we're kids and Ryan and I are bestest friends.

I had another friend when I was younger who was named Jamie. Jamie was a smallish kid who was usually very quiet. His dad, Bruce, had served in the navy during Vietnam and came out of that experience a very loud, tattooed and aggressive individual. I've never seen anyone get abused, mentally and/or physically, like Jamie. His dad was such an asshole while he was growing up that Jamie lived in constant fear. As an example, one time when I was in elementary school, I stayed over at Jamie's house on a Saturday. On Sunday morning, Jamie's mom cooked us all up a nice big breakfast. When I was younger, I wasn't a big fan of bacon. I'm not sure why, I mean, I'd KILL for pork of any kind NOW, but back then, I just wasn't into it. Long story short, I refused the bacon and told Jamie that he could have the rest. His dad, apparently missing what I had said, became enraged as soon as Jamie had placed the bacon on his plate. Bruce the dickhead grabbed Jamie by the arm, drug him out of the room and beat the crap out of him for not letting me have the bacon.

Seriously...I didn't WANT the bacon...

You know, thinking about this event now makes me want to go give Bruce a stern talking to, and by "talking to," I mean "straight left to the mouth." Remember, I know where you live, Brucie...

Anyhoo, the beatings and the belittlings and such didn't keep Jamie from doing some of the most absolutely stupid things, it just meant that, when he got caught, he'd get smacked around more than us other kids. Like that time he blew up that lamp!..Heh heh...I kind of felt sorry for Jamie, but...Hey, forget I said any of that stuff...In fact, WOAH, is that a butterfly? Over there! RIGHT OVER THERE!

Oh, heck. It must've fluttered away...Where were we...

Oh yeah, "Jamie" was my friend. As such, Ryan and Jamie soon became friends (Ryan always picked up the friends of his friends as his own, he was (probably still is) a "networker.") and us 3 did stuff together from time to time. One of our "traditions" was to go to Skate City on New Year's Eve for their "lock-in skate party." IT WAS AWESOME! You conned your folks into giving you some money and, for one insanely low price, you got to skate from 6:00pm until ONE O'CLOCK IN THE FRIGGIN' MORNING! That's right, out until after midnight! When I was a kid, it was the closest to tasting sweet, sweet freedom as I could possibly get. There was skating and video games and food and girls (not that I was visible to them) and it was big, big fun! In general, we would be driven to these events every year by Sue, Jamie's mom (I wonder how Bruce treated her)...Afterwards, we'd be picked up and driven back to Jamie's house where we'd all have a "sleep-over." One particular time that we had this "sleep-over," SOMEBODY (I know it wasn't me, it HAD to be Ryan) made one of the most RIDICULOUS claims of all time...One that HAD to be investigated...

Ryan's RIDICULOUS claim was: "Hey, someone at school told me that if you mix ammonia and chlorine bleach, it'll explode, like a bomb!"

My memories of this whole event aren't necessarily complete, but I'm pretty sure that, around this time, we were all in the seventh grade. After elementary school, which went up to 6th grade here where I live, I attended Sproul junior high. Jamie and Ryan, however, went to Watson (Sproul's ARCH RIVAL!)...As such, there were now a whole new set of "mystery kids" who seemed to be filling Ryan and/or Jamie's heads with some new tale each week. THIS bit of information, though, was completely different AND (dare I say) "exciting!" If we did things right, things might EXPLODE! We HAD to try it out, even if it meant blowing up the basement and earning Jamie another ass-whuppin' (what's one more, right?). Displaying his usual goofy mental abandon, Jamie rushed headlong into the laundry room and quickly emerged with the earlier named components. In our sudden scientifically fueled furor, we hunted around for a container that could be suitable for the impending "experiment." After an exhaustive search, we settled on a container that would commonly be called "a ziploc baggie." After a short (yet serious) discussion, we decided it was time to green-light "project chemical bomb."

One kid held the baggie, one kid poured the bleach and the other was saddled with the responsibility of handling the ammonia. Slowly and carefully (and scientifically), we mixed the components, each of us tensely awaiting SOME kind of volatile reaction...After it was all said and done, though, we didn't get the big crazy explosion that we had been told would happen (and secretly hoped for). In fact, by our standards, the whole combining thing was pretty damn uneventful. The liquid DID emit a nasty, chemical-y odor, but instead of going boom, it just kind of sat there...No explosion, no fizzle, no pop, no fireball, no nothing...

Feh...

Not satisfied with the fact, albeit unknown to us, that we had just concocted a very powerful acid, ryan offered that our would-be bomb "might need a fuse." Of course, Jamie and I agreed that this, certainly, could be the case...

As such, we set the little acid-baggie down and went off in search of anything that we could turn into a fuse. Ultimately, we ended up with one of Jamie's shoelaces, onto which we sprayed some accelerant (Aquanet, probably belonging to Jamie's sister). Placing this into the bag and lighting it did nothing. Well, nothing spectacular at least. The shoelace lit up for a second or two, slightly melting the ziploc bag, but it did not ignite the liquid inside it as we had all dreamed it would. We were defeated, our attempt at a molitov cocktail having ended up as an unspectacular clear liquid with a nasty stink. We HAD, however, proven that whichever mystery kid at Watson which had told this tale was lying. At the very least, they too had been misled. In the end, there was no big boom, there was no loss of life or limb. It seemed that it was time to declare the experiment "over" and do something more constructive like play Metroid. Of course, we now had the responsibility of disposing of the dangerous mixture...

So, you may be thinking "Where the Hell is he going with this?" Big payoff, just around the corner. Stay tuned, kids...

Since it was Jamie's house we were at, we figured that he would know where would be the best place to dispose of our concotion. As such, the vile stuff was passed over to him and he grasped it firmly, with both of his wee little hands, at the top of the baggie. Goofball started toward the laundry room, but hesitated. I'm not quite sure what possessed him to do what he did, but he damn well did it. Granted, he did a lot of stupid crap, but this was really something...Jamie, bag full of acid in hand, stopped, looked at the bag, placed his face as close to it as he could and (for whatever reason) breathed in a giant whiff of the fumes.

The "pandelerium" that followed resembled the kind of action you'd expect to see in a Three Stooges short. Jamie's tiny head snapped back, his little eyes at started to water and his (wee) face was suddenly bright red. He screamed at the top of his (smallish) lungs, "OH MY GOD, IT BURNS! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" He then started flailing his (tiny) arms around and running about, bumping into walls and shit. Of course, his sudden frenetic kineticness sent the little doom-baggie full of homemade hydrochloric acid tumbling toward the basement floor. While Jamie stumbled about, tripping over furniture and screaming like a nutcase, the acid (predictably) fell on the shitty seventies brown shag carpet which so lovingly adorned the family room there in Jamie's home. While dumbass was wondering (aloud, mind you) whether he'd ever be able to see again, Ryan and I were praying that his cries didn't alert ol' Bruce that something could be amiss downstairs...That family room doubled as his office (he's an insurance salesman or something equally as vile) and it surely wouldn't do to have 3 goofy ass kids flinging acid everywhere, not to mention blinding his progeny. Soon enough, though, we got Jamie to calm down and also to (thankfully) shut the Hell up.

Once things settled down, we were able to "survey the scene," (except Jamie, remember...he was now blind) as it were. the acid had already eaten away the color from the patch of carpet that it spilled out on and was threatening to dissolve fibers as well. The three of us sprung into action, grabbing cleaning products and scrubbing the acid-patch as best we could, trying desperately to reverse the unreversible. After a while, we figured that we had done all that we could do. Jamie decided that the only way to avoid being beaten to death by his dad was to hide the patch by rearranging the furniture, so that's what we did. The ottoman that went with the chair covered the spot nicely and actually, the furniture, and the room as a whole, looked real nice after we rearranged it. I'm not sure if Bruce or Sue ever noticed the change, but if they did, they didn't say anything. Jamie avoided a beating, for another day at least, and we all avoided being horribly disfigured by our would be bomb. In fact, when it's all said and done, I'd label that experiment "a success!"

The moral of this story is simple: Don't try this crap at home, kids. Try it at your friend's house. If anything goes wrong, run like Hell. Oh yeah, stay in school. Don't do drugs. Eat your peas. Love Jesus. Obey the law of the pack. Don't believe what the kids at school tell you. Always wear your seatbelt. Thank you.

Labels: collin crap, indignities, lame stories, me roots