The moron was me. I'm the idiot who set a small chunk of his grass on fire. The worst part...this isn't even the first time I've done something like this.

Kids, don't play with fire. First and foremost, no one was hurt and it wasn't really that big of a deal. I completely forgot the fire pit had holes in the bottom and when I used lighter fluid to get the fire started, it dripped through the holes and under the pit. There was a small piece of wood that fell through and lit the fluid on fire. Once the fluid burned out, everything was fine.

I'm definitely not suggesting this was ideal.  I would much rather not have lighter fluid on fire in my yard but we were quick with some water and we used a board to help put the blaze out.

The aftermath isn't great but it's not too bad. Grass has already started to grow back.

Yard on Fire
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Sadly, this is not my first time having something like this happen. The last time this happened, there was thankfully snow on the ground. A few years ago at my old house in Minnesota, I poured gas (first mistake) into a really low, dying fire, just to pick up the heat a bit. I knew it wasn't very smart but I was hoping to be quick enough to just pour a little bit. I wasn't. Not a good idea at all.

The flame traveled up the gas and almost onto my hand that was holding the plastic canister. I ended up throwing the canister in a snow bank and my friend and I covered the entire thing with snow to put it out. Even covered in snow, it still took about 10 minutes for the entire thing to burn out. Thankfully all was fine that time too. There ended up being just a black spot in the grass, under the canister, where we buried in the snow.

I've had hundreds of bonfires in my life and twice now I've made the same mistake. While I did have fun poking at myself in this article it should be mentioned to be safe when messing around with fire. Things can go from bad to worse really fast and you're left with a problem you can't fix. You can hurt yourself or someone else really badly.

My dad had this saying growing up that went like "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I'm an idiot."

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