Fire Works (a little too well) on New Year's Eve

On New Year’s Eve, I arrived early to a party so I helped set up by moving furniture and placing a couple dozen tea light candles in various locations around the house. I also helped myself to some drinks, so by the time the party rolled around, I was already feeling toasty and having a good time.

Just before midnight, everyone went to the roof to watch fireworks. Because the temperature was freezing, several of us returned to the house within ten minutes in order to keep warm and refill our beverages. Once back inside, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the corner table seemed especially bright. How was such a tiny candle making so much light? I did a double take and realized that that wasn’t just a single flame, but that the table was actually on fire. I approached for a closer look and saw that, fortunately, the table itself wasn’t on fire, but the pile of napkins that had been decoratively fanned out next to the snacks had caught ablaze. Panicked, I reacted hastily by grabbing the flaming napkins with both hands and ran with them to the kitchen sink, then turned on the faucet to extinguish the fire.

Looking back, this was not the wisest action. While it was good to address the fire issue, there were other ways to handle the potential disaster rather than grabbing it with my hands. Being thoroughly intoxicated, however, logic wasn’t on my side. After burning my hands, my second thought was that I should have dumped my beverage on it, but I hardly think throwing a cup of rum on a fire would have helped the situation.

The hosts thanked me for saving their house and I received the hero treatment from several of the guests. I felt special, but I also felt like a dumbass, especially when the pain set in. While my inebriation had soothed the burning sensation initially, after twenty minutes, I started really feeling it. The skin peeled off and I tried to act like my second-degree burns were no big deal since I wanted to maintain my aura of hero rather than idiot wimp. Needing relief, I stuck my right thumb, which suffered the brunt of the burning, in a cup of water to cool it down.

Later in the night, I made conversation with some people at the party I hadn’t met yet. They inquired why my hand was in a cup of water, so I showed them my wound and thought I’d earn some sympathy points. “Oh, you’re the pyro!” “Pyro?!” I asked. Evidently, their interpretation of the scene was that I had set the fire myself and was running around it with it for some reckless fun. “I’m not a pyro, I’m a hero!” I slurred loudly. This turned out to be a difficult case to argue, since I was double fisting: one hand holding a cup with alcohol, the other hand wading in a cup of water. If I were looking at me, I would have guessed “crazy” rather than hero, too.

(P.S. My thumb is now almost entirely healed!)