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The Risks of Campfire Jumping before/after I went and visited them as they camped on her parent's property, along with her siblings, and their friends. At one point, we threw a bunch of white pine into the fire, which went up like gangbusters. My friend, j, started to get drunk. "I want to see johnny jump through the fire." he said. Johnny is seventeen, going on eighteen a day after my birthday, the ninth of july. A younger sibling of A, J's wife. Johnny caves to the peer pressure with amazing speed. "I'll do it." he said, and jumped through the fire, which was in a fire pit about three and a half feet in diameter. We cheered. "Look," he said, "I'll do it again." We made him wait while we added more white pine to the fire. The fire towered over us all in that way that white pine sparks up then dies quickly, an impotent rage. And he jumped through again. "Say so long to your eye lashes," j said. It was true. We sat, still for a moment, digesting it all, in those hushes that fall over a group camping from time to time. Now, all night there had been this guy Pete, humping our legs and spilling stories full of shit. Stories like..."No shit, I was in Jamaica, and this guy took me back to his place to sell me some weed, and he showed me this tray, and I sat in front of the tray and they took my picture, and on the tray was two ounces of weed, and about ninety lines of blow all cut up..." You know, the kind of pathetic, "Oh please like me," bullshit you hear when you meet some people, that is so reeking of bullshit that you don't even feel the need to call them out on their low-self-esteem lies. Sometimes, I just tune a person out when they start a story with the words, "no shit." Anyway, a hush fell over the campsite as we heard the fire crackle. I heard footsteps, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Pete coming at the fire at a dead sprint. With quite a head of speed, and a look of determination he jumps from one end of the fire. He flies through the fire. And lands with one foot on a rock on the otherside of the fire and falls ass-backwards into the raging blaze. He rolls over quickly to the ground and pats himself out. Everyone stops, awestruck. Everyone except me. I laughed like Satan on a three day Nitrous Oxide binge. I stopped to say, "Woah, dude, are you all right?" He nodded. And I laughed some more. I proceeded to mock him the rest of the night, as his skin grew redder and redder. He was blatantly attention seeking. He deserved it. Be the hero, take the glory. If you fail, you take the scorn, I guess.
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