Pyro

My son decided to burn the house down yesterday. My response: "Gavin don't ever do that again!"

I had no idea there was anything out of the ordinary going on upstairs until Gavin came to ask if he could play with his neighbor friend. As soon as the smell hit me and I asked him what was going on, I could tell from the look in his eyes that it wasn't going to be good!

His first attempt at the truth failed miserably. He tried to tell me that he happened upon a lighter in his bedroom, checked it to see if it worked and the corner of the paper just happened to be in way of the flame. He was baffled at how it all had come about and after that, being the good scout that he is, he set to extinguishing it as quickly as he could. Immediately, I went up to check his room.

He had worked pretty fast to put those flames out. When I reached his room, the window was open, the garbage that held the evidence was next to the open window, the ceiling fan was on and he had drug a floor fan into his room and directed it to blow away from his door and out his open window. I thought how dissappointed he must have been to find, that despite all his effort, he had been foiled by Mom's Mega-Senses.

I went directly to the garbage and found only a small portion of what used to be a wad of papers and a half-melted little box. I don't think our boy scout knew what hit him. His evidence clearly revealed the real "truth". Situation assessed, Mom-Detective on the case, he had to change his story. Shamefully, he admitted that the flames were too much fun to watch and it wasn't long before it was more than he could handle and into the garbage the blaze was stashed.

Overall, his parents did a good job of making him feel as miserable as possible. Maybe if he felt bad enough he wouldn't ever, EVER do it again. Success in that department, I'm sure. Unfortunately, our house stunk to high heaven all night, but in the end Dad made enough jokes about it that the culprit was his normal, happy, lighter-free, pre-teen. In fact, his first act of reform was to hand me the lighter and make me promise to never let him have it again.