11:32 am | 17 April 2003 | pyromania '83

In 1983 the family room in my dad's house is dark-panelled with an eyesore of a fireplace (the abominable orange brick of that house!) and a dark plum-navy mottled carpet�the kind that is not only marbled in colour, but which has different levels of fibre so it looks like some kind of tufty alien moss. There is a two-inch-long burn in the carpet in front of the fireplace where a log once bounced out. To the left of the fireplace, on the orange-brick hearth, is a set of wrought-iron, medieval-looking implements (tongs, a shovel for ashes, some kind of spear or pike whose purpose is vague). There�s also a canister of mineral dust (which, when sprinkled on the firewood, makes the flames leap blue and green and violet) and a box of Ohio Blue-Tipped Kitchen Matches.

Dad kneels next to the fireplace with ash-blackened leather gloves on, piling splits of firewood onto the grate, and I stand next to him, handing him twists of newspaper ("twisting it makes it burn longer and gives the firewood more of a chance to light," he has explained, me nodding solemnly). My hands are grimy with thick resinous newspaper ink but I am not a squeamish child. Dad hands me the box of matches and says I can light the newspaper, and I am trembling with excitement. I love the fireplace, its cold, dark smell and then the inconsistent heat and sweet nose-wrinkling tang of conifer logs (the sap bubbling and spitting, pricking the sharp scent of pine into the air). This is the first time Dad has let me light it.

I drag the match�s head across the box and the tip sparks into flame. The deliciously bitter sulphur smell makes my eyes water and I hold the match between thumb and forefinger, all the way at the bottom. I am ready to light the paper when:

"Wait a minute." Dad cocks his head, looks at the fireplace, sees some structural flaw in how he�s stacked the wood, and takes a moment to rearrange it. I am still staring at the flame as it eats its way down the little stick, further and further, and Dad is getting more involved in the piling of the wood, and there�s only a half-inch of matchstick left, and I can feel the heat of the fire on my fingers now, but I am staring at it, transfixed, and it hurts a little but Dad said to wait, and I am obedient and a tough stubborn little kid and so I wait, and now there is no stick, just a five-year-old girl with a blonde Dutch Boy bob holding a drop of fire between her fingers, and then Dad turns around and looks at me and bellows in fear. I don�t start crying until I see that he is upset; the fire is out by now, no harm done except to my hand, where raw fluid-filled welts are already bouncing up on the pads of thumb and forefinger, and then the entire being-carried-upstairs-and-having-water-run-over-the-hand-while-explaining-to-my-stepmother-what-happened-and-having-her-panic, and then sitting on the swing-set holding an ice cube wrapped in a child�s terry washcloth with a pink shark printed on it and probably eating some candy as recompense, and my father and stepmother in the house talking in hushed voices. Probably saying something about how I was creepy even in 1983. clm.