Feb. 2, 2008What I put off doing: Starting to read a 600-page book for class, calling my mom back, cleaning my room, writing an article
What I did instead: Burned books in my friend's backyard
I had a lot of stuff to do this weekend. Instead of doing any of it, I went to a party at my friend Matt's house. Matt used to own a company that sold textbooks. Then a bunch of textbook companies threatened to sue the pants off of Matt for selling textbooks. Ergo, Matt no longer owns a company that sells textbooks.
The fire in the pit in the backyard started innocently enough, with a few pieces of kindling and some coals. Sometime around 10p.m., though, our pretty little fire turned into a roaring, smoky blaze. Matt came outside with illegal-to-sell copies of A Conceptual Introduction to Chemistry and A Course in Phonetics, and an hour later, we had burned about 20 books. Charred, flaky pages turned to ash flew into the air. It was like a scene out of Fahrenheit 451, but without the dystopian sci-fi subplot.
But that, of course, wasn't enough. I don't think I have to articulate that no matter how old they are, men+beer+fire=those men turning into curious little boys and trying to throw anything within eyesight into the fire to watch it burn. So in went beer bottles, in went refrigerator boxes and in went a metal folding chair. Thankfully, I stood far enough back that in did not go Yvonne.
Was procrastinating worth it? Damn straight it was. Burning stuff is fun. Plus, the next day Mom got her call and some pages got read. So, yknow, it all worked out.
