Scars

As kids, we did a lot of stupid things that as we grow up, we tend not to be proud of them but I’m sure not everyone almost burnt their face off like I almost did.

I was around thirteen or fourteen years old at the time, when this devastating incident happened. I had gone over to visit a friend who was a generator mechanic. He had this generator with him that he was repairing at the time so I just stood there and watched him work.

I stayed for some time just talking about everything and nothing with him and that was when I remembered this particular thing I always saw on the television, it was called Fire Breathing. Someone holding a fire would pour some fuel in their mouth then blow it at the fire and there would be this huge fire. The whole thing looked so cool as if the fire was coming out of their mouth and I always wanted to try it.

I knew it was probably a bad idea but unfortunately, the voice asking me not to do it wasn’t as loud as the one encouraging me to go ahead, so I walked over to where my friend was and collected some fuel from the generator he was working on. He had no idea what I wanted to do so he just waited and watched.

I poured the fuel in my mouth and lit a matchstick. But the moment I got ready to blow into the matchstick, everything went sideways. I must have done it wrongly obviously, because the next thing I knew, a part of my face was on fire. With the speed of light, I tried to put off the fire with my clothes but by the time the fire was put off, the damage had already been done.

That moment felt like I was living a nightmare. I didn’t know what next to do so I did the only thing I could do, I went and told my mom about it. The terrified look on her face told me that it was bad and when she dragged me to a call center to phone my dad, I knew it was really bad. I remember the first question my dad had asked was “Did he affect his eyes?”

Later that night, when he got back from work, I was expecting the greatest beating of my life but instead, he applied some medications on the wound and let me be.

It took months for the scars to clear off and when it eventually did, I vowed never to try such a thing ever again in my life.

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