While most kids were whacking their willies, discovering that it shot out some white gunky stuff if you kept at it, I was—I mean, I was doing that too—but I was also doing something else. You know; grown man shit. I was out… getting arrested. Thirteen years old, and I had my first felony.
I had developed a fascination with fire. Well, not so much fire—the effect that fire has on things.
Me and an accomplice (let’s call him Air) would roam the streets once night fell and find things to burn. We were equipped with the young arsonist’s starter pack: a zippo, lighter fluid, and matches, all crammed into a common black backpack. Also, I typically wore rollerblades, and Air rode a bike. These were our getaway vehicles. But who would suspect a thing, right?
The torchings started small; we might be strolling through the alley and happen to set a random trashcan on fire. Other times, we’d find a pair of discarded baby shoes in the trash can, take them out, light them on fire, and chuck em at the other person like a fireball. But a literal fireball.
We grew tired of these simple and trite alley fires. So we started pushing the envelope and seeing what more we could get away with.
The targets grew in size. Trashcans became dumpsters.
And then one cool, Spring night, me and Air were behind a building. It was an old Marshall’s building. The Marshall’s may have been closed down. It didn’t seem like a building that would be very inhabited.
We did our thing. Poured some lighter fluid into the dumpster and tossed a match in. Assuming that something in the dumpster would catch on fire, we bolted. We ran across Harlem Ave. (a busy street even now at night), giggling like retards, not even have marveled at our work yet. When we got to the other side of the street, we turned around and we looked back in sheer horror.
Not just the dumpster, but the motherfucking building was on fire.
The dumpster had apparently been too close to the wall, and the fire spread up the wall with great speed and ferocity. This wasn’t a fire that would just “go away” on it’s own.
Without even saying goodbye, Air ran off into the distance, assumingly to his house, on the other side of town. My house was only three blocks away, but that sprint home seemed to last eons. I felt like escaped convict as I rushed home, cutting across yards, hoping fences, and praying to god I could just make it to my front door…
When I reached my house, I ran upstairs and lay in my bed, panting like someone with emphysema. I had broken into a deep sweat, and my heart was racing furiously. That’s when I heard the first sirens. They were a block away. Surely they were coming for me. They traced my trail. A neighbor tipped them off. Dogs were onto me. I was a dead man.
I lay there in trepidation for a very long time. I was ready for the cops to break down my door and take me to jail. They didn’t, though. Yet, the sirens weren’t going away.
I heard sirens all night.
Somehow, I managed to doze off and survive the night. I did it. I escaped.
You would think that would be it. My retirement. My “stint as an arsonist” was a wrap. Right?
You obviously don’t know me very well.
The burnings resumed, less than a week later. The building we torched only fueled our fire… for fire. It made us cocky and hungry…sorry, I shouldn’t use those two words in the same sentence. It made us hungry. Hungry for a bigger landmark. For pure manipulation of fire. We wanted flamethrowers. We wanted pyrokinetic powers.
One night, we were drifting around a park, looking for targets. This was the very park where we had grown up playing T-ball, about half of our lifetimes ago. Then, I spotted a port-a-potty (a portable toilet, for our international friends).
Hey! Look at that. I wonder if that will light on fire, I mused. Luckily, I had all the tools at my arsenal to test that theory.
It burned, all right. It burned real fucking good.
Laughing, we ran across the park, towards the street. I was a fast kid, and was able to escape all of the scenes of my crimes in time. Except now, I was wearing my rollerblades, running awkwardly on top of grass. No matter, I was close to the street.
I was also close to the police station. Less than one block away.
I was in the middle baseball diamond when I saw the squad cars pull up. With my skates, I was toast. There would be no escaping this one.
The cops took us to the police station and well, they had seen all they needed to.
Looking in our bag, it was clear that this wasn’t a one time thing. We were seasoned vets. We were responsible for all of these little and large fires that had been set throughout town for the last few weeks. They got us for the Marshall’s building. And then they told us that there was a janitor in that building who nearly died, and they could charge us for attempted manslaughter.
I denied everything. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence against us, I denied it all.
Then they said they had us on camera. For a fire at Jewel, the grocery store. This was odd, because I didn’t recall ever setting anything on fire there. But they kept pushing it, saying that they had us on camera. And then they told me that Air had already confessed. They had separated us, so we had no way of corroborating our stories. I was in that interrogation room for a hell of a long time, and if my confession meant me going home, I would crack. And I did.
In actuality, Air hadn’t confessed. It was just the cops messing with some 13 year old kids.
Yet, by this point, I had already blamed everything on him—which I’m not proud about—but it did end up getting me the lesser sentence. He got the maximum sentence for a first time juvenile offender: 100 hours of community service. I got 75 hours. And let me tell you, that shit SUCKED!
I had to toil away at some shitty little drab office ran by a bunch of geriatrics. File their documents and shit. Clean plates. Chisel gunk out of the walls. It took me an entire summer of work to finish my sentence. Each day there was like the worst day of my life. A 2 hour shift felt like 10 hours. I loathed everyone at that office and thought they were all fucktards… But I was the one who got caught, so I guess I was the bigger fucktard.
Lesson learned though:
Don’t get caught.
And also, if you are going to do anything retarded or anarchistic like the arson I caused, do it before you are 18. You will get off with a community service punishment, at worst. Once you hit 18, and you try that shit then? You are getting tried as adult. And you will be going to jail.
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