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As a kid – and sometimes as an adult, if our life went sideways – there's a primal urge to be doing something we think we're not supposed to be doing. It's like the thrill of committing a miniature crime, only getting caught usually results in nothing more than a well-deserved grounding. If we don't get caught, however, we ride that thrill like a tall wave out in the middle of the ocean that settles back down without ever crashing.
In 1992, I was living in Wexford, a suburb just north of Pittsburgh. We lived in a new development that had a symmetrical loop with a cul-de-sac on each side that looked like a diagram of the female reproductive system from above. On the south end of the loop, there was a deep, craterous drainage area with a rock bed where the neighborhood culverts let out. When you climbed down into it, the hillside obscured the nearby houses, making it the perfect place for doing things you weren't supposed to be doing. This is where my friend and I lit smoke bombs.
The smoke bombs resembled tiny versions of the explosives from a Tom & Jerry cartoon: a single sphere with a wick, except instead of black, these came in assorted colors and you got twelve per cellophane pack. I remember feeling disappointed at the time that they didn't sell something that actually exploded and we'd have to make do with lighting the fuses for colored smoke shows instead. In retrospect, it seems ridiculous that a 12-year-old could buy these in the first place, but there I was, bummed out we couldn't get our hands on something even more dangerous. On the bright side, every mailbox in that neighborhood is still intact and I managed to retain all my digits.
They sold these all over but I remember getting mine at the same place I got the MAD Magazines I also wasn't supposed to have. My friend's mother didn't know that, and her level of strictness about these things was, to put it generously, astray. Just the mere act of putting the pack of smoke bombs and the magazine on the counter felt like I was getting away with murder in broad daylight. Are they really going to let me get these? The store was as tiny as an affordable Manhattan apartment and it sat alone at the corner of a desolate crossroad like it was from the old west. We made the left at this store to get to one of the travel baseball fields. The parents alternated carpooling duties so it must have been far away. When I was young I had zero ability to conceptualize distance or time in an automobile, so to me it was just as far as anything else. Anyway, despite our pleading, when my mom drove we rarely stopped at this store. Not that it would matter, since buying contraband like this was verboten on her watch.
Upon our return, we set off. Bye, Mom, we're going out to play.
We rambled deeper into the neighborhood to the edge of the spot, descended the hill, and got into position. We opened the package and selected our first victim. The act played out like the structure of a joke: Setup, build, punchline. We lit the fuse, stepped back, and watched the colored smoke hiss its way out. Eleven more to go.
We took turns picking the next color and lighting the fuse. It was fabulous every time. The dozen smoke bombs provided all of twenty minutes of unadulterated entertainment. But now they were gone. We looked around. What else should we light on fire?
Clearly nothing in this rock bed. There was a house under construction up the hill and back toward my house. Fast food wrappers. Paper cups. Scraps of lumber. A target-rich environment. We left the pile of delinquent evidence without even a thought of displacing it and after spraining many ankles on the uneven rock bed, we emerged street-level.
I'd come to believe the houses in this neighborhood were built by elves. I was an outside cat, so I spent my youth sunburnt and sweaty. And every day I would go outside and see entire new wings of houses erected without ever seeing a soul or hearing a diesel engine idling. Not one. So with no foreman or supervisor in sight, I had to go inspect the elves' work myself. I spend a good year playing around new home construction sites. Climbing the giant piles of dirt and aggregate. Scaling the temporary-and-definitely-not-to-code stairs in the half-framed structures. Setting up the glass soda bottles on a sawhorse and breaking them with pitched rocks. And setting tiny fires with my mom's Bic cigarette lighters.
This house was close to completion, but the lot was uneven, with ungraded dirt still strewn with materials. It was also on an open corner and only two houses down from mine. Not the paragon of privacy one might seek out for acts of questionable judgment. Nevertheless, we found some small off-cuts of wood and set about lighting them ablaze. We positioned ourselves about 30 feet from the corner of the house and found a low spot in the dirt - something we could cover up more easily in the event of the unexpected.
We squatted. I put the lighter to the edge of the wood a pulled the wheel. Nothing. Pulled again. Nothing. A third time yields the familiar butane flame, but after a few seconds of holding it to the corner of scrap wood, the steel top got too hot and my thumb escaped. This was already less fun than expected. We both shifted our postures in preparation to try again, but my conscience suggested I take one last look around for any authorities.
And authorities there were. As soon as my head lifted I caught eyes with my parents 50 yards away with their arms folded looking dead in my face. Drenched in guilt, I approached. They didn't say much, but they didn't have to. This wasn't the first time I made the walk of shame from the spot where I was perpetrating my childhood crime to the nearby spot where my parents were standing, observing me do it. It also wouldn't be the last.