A long-awaited story

So, as many of you know, I lived in Prague, in the Czech Republic, for a semester before coming to college. This was as part of a discipleship program. I had a roommate, Ben R. We lived in a nice little circa-1950's style Czech flat. Some of the amenities were a clothes washer (but no dryer), and an in-line hot-water heater for the kitchen sink.


We had two rooms that we used as bedrooms - the living room area, and the kitchen area. Both had beds in them. Ben took the kitchen - I was in the living room.


Sidenote - We replaced the first letter of the room name with the first letter of our name, when talking about the rooms. For example, my bedroom was the Jiving room; take the L off of living room, and put a J there. Ben was in the kitchen. I'll let you figure that one out . . .



A crucial piece of background information - while we had a small clothes washer in the flat, we did not have a dryer. This is normal for the Czech. After all, you can hang your clothes out to dry. It saves money. So, we strung up ropes that I had brought along, and dried our clothes on them. It worked very well.


One night Ben needed a pair of underware to be dry for the next day. Rather than chance the rope-dryers, he placed the pair on top of the in-line water-heater for the kitchen sink. The advantage to this was the pilot light in the water heater - it was always on, and the heat from it was vented out the top of the heater. Ben placed his underware over the vent on the top, and the underware dried out just fine.

Ben often slept later than I did. Seeing as he was in the kitchen, and I need breakfast to function well, I would slip quietly into the kitchen and make myself some oatmeal or something. That particular morning I turned on the hot water to fill my little pot. I failed to note the underware on top of the heater. To my great surprise, flames from the pilot light started shooting out the front of the heater, through the little hole used to light the pilot light if it had gone out. Apparently when the vent at the top was covered up, the fire came out the hole!

The flames shot upward, and I was afraid that I had crisped Ben's underware. I hurriedly turned the water off and checked - to my great relief they were unsinged.

After the fact this episode was very amusing to me. I shared it with Ben and a friend of ours who had come over from America to visit.






It was at this point that we . . . well, we decided to reinact what had happened, and get it on film.








Three guys, fire, underware . . . can ya blame us?







So we attempted it. Well, it turned out that the flame shooting out the water heater wasn't enough to light the underware on fire - at least, not quickly enough.



But Ben had bought a bottle of Absinthe while we were there. Don't ask me why.




It's pretty strong stuff.









Yeah - that's Ben.

Yeah - that's a bottle of Absinthe.

Yeah - that's his pair of briefs on the water heater



But he decided he should probably disguise himself, so we took a second picture.






He named the hat Janet.





We set up elaborate safety precautions before beginning - we're guys, but we're not stupid . . .





Okay, so we're guys.





We filled up the sink with soapy water, and we filled a couple pitchers with water, just in case the fire got out of hand.

We attached a thread to the underware so we could twitch them off the heater into the sink, and not worry about being burned.


. . .



. . .



Okay, so they seemed elaborate at the time.









*You may have to try dragging the video slider slightly to the right - for some reason it freezes, but if you drag if slightly it will keep playing.*



This was our first try - For some reason the flame shot out the back this time, instead of the front. You can't really tell it from the video, but they did. We were very shocked.


And, yes, that was me turning the water on.

(Micah and Justin D., don't worry; if I am on a camp team I won't do this while representing the school. Actually, throughout this entire process the three of us were continually saying to each other, "This is a really stupid idea . . . man, this is dumb . . . if this goes wrong . . . man, this is stupid)



So we adjusted the underware, and tried again.


This is where a little miscommunication occured - I was the designated 'puller.' I was supposed to pull the thread so the underware would fall into the sink and be extinguished. However, I assumed we were going for complete burn-out. Ben merely assumed that we were going to light the briefs on fire.




*You may have to try dragging the video slider slightly to the right - for some reason it freezes, but if you drag if slightly it will keep playing.*






Man, that Absinthe is strong stuff! Did you see how long it kept burning?










Here's the aftermath:
















So, how'd you spend YOUR spring break?