Chapter Two

Chapter Two of my memoir

Chapter Two

As it turned out, I had a lot to worry about. Dad was always at work or passed out, Mom was usually sleeping, and Mike, the firebug, was a busy little guy. It didn’t help matters that our parents didn’t make the best choices in Christmas gifts for Mike. There was the time when Mike was only about six years old and they bought him a wood burning kit. Are you kidding me? They then turned him loose with it in his room, where he proceeded to brand his wood headboard and footboard. There is no telling what else he might have burned had he not unintentionally alerted us to his mischief when he applied his new wood burning tool to his plastic-covered toy box, which had the effect of filling the house with the very distinct smell of burning plastic. My parents had the nerve to act surprised that six-year-old Mike would go on a burning spree with his new present. Apparently, they never thought to read the age-appropriate listings on the boxes of the toys they bought for Mike. I stood at the door of his room that night as Mom and Dad raged about all the destruction Mike-the-Firebug had wrought and thought to myself, These people are in charge here?


The next year at Christmas, my parents were evidently determined to see just how far they could push the limits with age-inappropriate toys. Mike got a chemistry set that year and I knew that I had my work cut out for me. I was a nervous wreck and I spent all the next morning reading the inside of the box trying to determine exactly how much trouble we were in for. That afternoon, my parents upped the ante when they decided to go out for a few hours and left me in charge of my brother. Of course, they did the responsible thing before they left and admonished Mike that he was not to play with his chemistry set while they were not home. I saw the gleam in his eye as they headed for the door and he headed for his chemistry set. I begged, I pleaded, I cajoled. I offered candy, cookies, everything I could think of, but to no avail. He took the lid off the box, sat down at the coffee table and one by one, he set out each of the little chemical containers. I was frantically reading through the list of included chemicals hoping to ward off death and destruction. I looked up to see that not only had Mike lined up all of the chemical containers on the table, but he had also removed the lids from each one of them. My heart leaped into my throat and I started chanting, “Becarefulbecarefulbecareful.”


Then the unthinkable happened. Mike sneezed. Little particles of every imaginable chemical floated up into his nose and mouth and all over his face. I was frozen in place for a split second and then I leaped into action. I jumped up off the couch, grabbed Mike by his shoulders and herded him into the bathroom where I stuck his head over the sink and splashed gallons of water onto his face. I was scared to death that he was going to die. I knew I would be the one to get in real trouble for that, even though it ultimately would have been their fault, but I knew they would never think of that. Besides, I was fond of the little guy. He was a lot of fun when he wasn’t setting things on fire or trying to poison himself. After a while, Mike wouldn’t let me splash any more water on his face, so I had to stop. I agreed to that, but I made him sit on the couch with me until our parents got home so that I could stare at his face at close range, making sure his skin wasn’t melting off and that he continued to breathe. We made it through that crisis and I was left wondering what the next year would bring. What I always wanted for Christmas was a set of responsible parents—or that at least one of them would learn to read the box before buying Mike’s Christmas present ...