Playing With Fire

 

There was an urban myth, way back in the mid-1970s, that certain teachers at my high school liked to perpetuate.  It went like this:  Somewhere, in some other city, a smart-ass kid felt it would be cool to falsely pull the fire alarm at school.  In so doing, a fire engine was dispatched.  During the race to the scene, the fire engine broadsided a car in a busy intersection.  Both occupants of the car were killed.  They were the parents of the kid who pulled the fire alarm.  It was meant to be a deterrent, of course.  The red fire alarm pulls, regularly spaced along the hallways, were always there, daring us.  Someone would succumb to temptation at least once a year.

Chemistry class was the most thrilling and dangerous, and our teacher seemed to thrive on minor spectacle.  After demonstrating the power of concentrated acids, he added a dash of hydrochloric acid to a beaker of water and drank it.  There were gasps.  Hydrochloric acid is naturally produced in the stomach.

It was fascinating.  Tricks with phenolphthalein indicator solution changing clear liquid to pink and back again by manipulating the ph.  And exotic.  A small chunk of phosphorus, stored in oil, when dropped into water sputtered and fizzled, trying to burst into flame, until it was consumed.

Bunsen burners always proved interesting.  We were paired off at our work benches, conducting an experiment which involved heating things in test tubes.  Alcohol was involved.  Instructions specified that we were not to heat the alcohol.  We had barely started when there were gasps, chairs scraping and students jumping back.  A test tube of alcohol had boiled over, spurting flames onto a desktop.  One fellow bolted for the fire pull just outside the classroom door.  The fire was out before the alarm sounded.  There were scorch marks on a notebook.  We looked at each other, knowing we were not in any danger.  It took a minute before it was agreed that we should exit the building.  Students were already filing past in the hallway as, smiling with pride, we emerged.  This was our doing.  It ruined a good chunk of the afternoon, but we all knew the real coup was the guy who legitimately got to pull the fire alarm.

There were other fun things in chemistry class.  A small yellow envelope was produced and containing a tightly coiled, eighth of an-inch-wide ribbon of metallic magnesium.  A small strip, an inch long, was snipped from the coil, pinched in tongs and touched to the flame of a Bunsen burner.  It ignited with an intensely brilliant white light and was gone in a flash.

Later that day, when I met up with my good friend after school, I knew by the sly smile on his face that something was up.  He slid his hand into his leather jacket and pulled it out just enough to reveal a yellow envelope.

We sat on it for a few weeks, until one late October evening when we met at the small elementary school in our neighbourhood.  The envelope with its coil of magnesium, twenty-five feet worth, was inside a brown paper sack.  The decision was made to light the entire thing in one go.

We left the asphalt pad adjacent to the school and moved into the middle of the playing field.  It was a dark night, there were no security lights around schools in those days, the nearest houses were fifty metres away on one side of the field, on the other side it was the backs of houses.  The fourth side was empty, opening onto an undeveloped marshland.  We set the coil on the ground and bent a little tail of ribbon out, like a fuse.  It took a couple of tries to get it to light, but eventually it caught.  We bolted back towards the school.  And… nothing.  We stopped and turned around.  Blackness.  We went back and tried again, lighting a little fuse.  Again, nothing.  On closer inspection, the problem was the strip of magnesium would burn up to the tightly wound coil and extinguish.  It was not hot enough to ignite the solid mass of the coil.  I looked at the brown paper bag and knew what we had to try.  The ribbon was uncoiled and loosely balled up, like a jumbo wad of steel wool.  We crumpled the paper bag and set the ball of magnesium on top, took a deep breath and lit the paper.

We were three strides into our run back towards the school when a blaze of sunlight projected our shadows onto the school wall.  Daylight had come to Balsam Grove on an October evening.  It was over in about two seconds.  We slowed long enough to look back.  Not a trace, but we felt it was best to vacate the area.

I often wonder if any of the nearby neighbours saw anything.  If it was dark in their houses and curtains were not drawn it had to light up the room.  Did they think, perhaps, that a UFO had paid a visit?  Or the Second Coming?  If anyone asks, I will assure them it was swamp gas.