Lighting a match with your thumbnail

Brookville, Pennsylvania
April 20, 2016 11:18am CST
I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. When I was a kid decades ago, we didn’t have garbage pickup. So the way we got rid of empty cereal boxes, tissues, and whatnot, was to dump them in an old barrel and set them on fire. That was one of my chores. Just about every day I took a bag of garbage and a box of strike anywhere matches up to the burn barrel. If it was dry, I could light a match off the side of the barrel, but if it was at all damp, I usually had to take two matches and light one – or both – off each other. But for a young boy, that was boring. So I started seeing how else I could light a match. I found out that if I was wearing a jacket, I could light one off the zipper. And then, perhaps after seeing it in some old western, I tried lighting a match with my thumbnail. It’s actually pretty easy, and for a young boy, it was really cool. So for months or so, even if it was dry, I’d light the match with my thumbnail. And then one day, the tip of the match broke off. Under my thumbnail. After it had lit. It only burned for, a tenth of a second or so, but man did it hurt. And even though I had successfully lit fifty or more matches with my thumbnail, I’ve never lit any that way since. I guess I learned my lesson.
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1 response
@carebear29 (31961)
• Wausau, Wisconsin
22 Apr 16
Whatever works lol
1 person likes this