While our more romanticized ideas of growing up involve exploring the world and managing to make friends with animal, vegetable, and mineral alike, we can’t deny that growing up also involves making mistakes.
A lot of the time, these mistakes just involved doing something that seemed really fun and then quickly wasn’t once we fell and hurt ourselves. Indeed, it turns out that no, you can’t toboggan down the stairs.
But many of us knew at least one kid who was a little too fascinated by fire for their own good. And as one story from Texas illustrates, that kid’s eyebrows aren’t the only victim of these ignition experiments.
Interior decorator Nissa-Lynn Parson of McKinney, Texas had settled in for a cozy Christmas with her family.
As her Facebook post makes clear, they had matching Christmas pajamas for the occasion and her kids were off enjoying their presents.
Parson described one of those kids, 12-year-old Cayden, as an avid reader who’s full of curiosity and interested in science.
And so, it didn’t come as much of a surprise to her when he had asked for a magnifying glass that year.
What she didn’t know, however, was what kind of experiment young Cayden had in mind.
As she would later discover, he and his two brothers went out to the front lawn and tried to burn a couple of holes into a piece of paper with a magnifying glass.
As you can see, this plan worked a little too well.
Before long, the boys ran inside and told Parson that a corner of the lawn was on fire and the Christmas lights were melting.
As she wrote , “Justin and I rushed outside to see the entire front lawn turning black! We grabbed buckets, Justin turned the sprinklers on, and I grabbed blankets to smother and trap it – before it could spread any more into the neighbors yard!”
Fortunately, the family was able to contain the blaze, which resulted in this hilarious photo.
As Parson wrote, “What a sight to see – a bunch of people running around crazy trying to put a front lawn fire out while wearing matching Christmas jammies!”
She was also sure to make it abundantly clear that this was an accident and since nothing tragic resulted from this, they’re not going to treat it that way.
And that’s good to hear, because Cayden looks he feels pretty guilty about the whole incident.
h/t: Facebook | Nissa-Lynn Parson
