Random Story – Lighting a match with my thumbnail

This is just an odd little story from my life. 

I’ve always said that I grew up a short drive from the middle of nowhere.  That was good for several reasons – less light pollution so I can see the stars and I prefer the outdoors to cities – but it was also bad for a few reasons.  Like it’s annoying that to go anywhere – grocery store, bank, movie theater – it takes half-an-hour.  Another bad thing is that we were so far out in the country, that it wasn’t until twenty-five or thirty years ago that someone offered to come out for trash collection.

This means that back when I was growing up in 80’s and 90’s, the way we got rid of our trash was to burn it.  And somehow that became my chore.  To do this, we had an old metal barrel with some holes cut in it to let air in set some distance from the house.  Every day or two, I’d take out the garbage cans and dump all the trash into the barrel.  I’d then light a match and hold it to some tissues or newspaper.  Hopefully, they would burn long enough for the cereal boxes or whatever to catch. 

For the most part, it wasn’t that bad of a chore.  Except in winter, when I’d sometimes have to slog through snow to get to the barrel, and then everything would be so damp from snow that it would take multiple tries to get something burning. 

But probably the biggest issue was boredom.  If I left before it caught, I could have a barrel half filled with damp trash the next time I had to burn stuff.  So I’d light it, then stand there for a few minutes to see if it really got going.  I either had a stick or a metal pole to move things around to try to help things out.

Another way to try to beat the boredom, was to try some games.  Like, trying to get the fire going with just one match.  But probably the biggest game was seeing where all I could strike the matches.  These were wooden, “strike anywhere” matches, so I tried as many places as I could.  It started with just the sides of the barrel, but then I’d use any old rock I could find.  If it was cold, I’d use the zipper on my coat.  But the most … memorable, I guess, was when I started using my thumbnail.  I must have seen a movie were the hero, or villain, lit a match with their thumb.  That looked cool, so I tried.  At first, I tried striking it off top, but it was too smooth.  I think I did get it to light a few times, but it took ten tries or so.  Then I discovered that if I put the tip of the match just under my thumbnail, I could get it to light.

For a month or two, that was how I would light the match.  Then one day I discovered WHY YOU SHOULD NOT DO THAT!  What happened, is a tiny bit of the match head broke off and became lodged under my thumbnail.  That wouldn’t be so bad, but it was burning.  It was a tiny, tiny bit, and it likely was finished burning by the time the pain signal reached my brain, but man did it hurt. 

After that, I went back to using the barrel or a random rock to light matches.

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Image from Pixabay.