Setting the car on fire -- Do I need a better title than that?

People have asked, and since I don't want to offend either of my readers (you and that other person) I can't help but tell my set-the-car-on-fire story. I can't believe I am publishing this.

So to make myself feel better, I will start out by blaming my wife. She is beautiful, smart and a pretty good cook when she wants to be, but she is the one who left the DVD player on in our van a month ago and sucked the life out of the battery. Of course, by the end you will see that this weak attempt to shift the blame is trash because I more or less prove that the fire and the dead battery aren't related, but for now let's just go with it. It wasn't my fault.

Being a good husband, I hurried home and parked my father-in-law's red Cadillac nice and close to the van, hoping to make quick work of this task. While I haven't spent a lot of time under the hood lately, I am definitely experienced at using jumper cables, and so I popped both hoods and hooked the cables up. No, there weren't any sparks. I had parked so close that I had to turn sideways to slide between the cars and into the driver's seat of the van. The key turned. The engine started. Still no sparks. Everything was going according to plan.

I slid back out of the driver's seat and back between the cars. I removed the cables. No sparks. I completed the whole process with my bare hands. Nothing but cold metal. I shut the hoods. I turn off the Caddy. I start coiling up my extra-long (and therefore very convenient) jumper cables when I smell something. Something electrical. I turn around and there is a trickle of smoke coming from underneath the hood of the my father-in-law's car. My first thought was that I had let it idle too long and it had overheated or something. I was contemplating this option when the smoke became worse, and I decided I should take a look. I pop the hood. A small orange flame was burning something on the left side of the engine, the same side as the battery, but not really next to the battery. A small (1/4" +/-) pipe was glowing red hot, but I didn't recognize what it was.

So this is where I have no excuse for myself. I panicked. Somewhere I remembered somebody telling me that the fuzzy stuff under the hood was meant to fall off if there was a fire and smother it, thereby saving the engine. Yes, I have been appropriately taunted for this since then, but as I stared at the growing orange flame, right next to a gasoline powered engine, I just wasn't quite thinking clearly. So I slammed the hood shut. This was an internal combustion engine, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Those of you who know me know that I am a deeply caring individual, and the welfare of others is always on the top of my list. Interestingly, since the flame was still burning under the hood I wasn't myself, so instead I acted out of self-interest. I jumped in the van and moved it far away. My thinking was sound. If the Caddy blows up in a huge ball of flame and heat and smoke it would be a bad idea to have our van sitting next to it. I jumped out of the van and ran back to the car and then stopped.

Now that I had acted in self-interest I didn't really have a plan. The smoke was pouring out from under the hood and I was beginning to doubt the hood-liner-smothering-the-fire plan, but I didn't really know what to do. At that point the kids had figured out what was going on and were coming out hoping to watch Grandpa's car burn up. The explosion scenario, unlikely as it was, still seemed possible so I yelled at them to go back inside. They reappear every 30 seconds for the rest of the story, wanting to see some action. Or roast marshmallows. Or both.

Now, years ago, when I was like 7-8 years old, I remember taking a family trip over the mountains in southern California, where the steep grade caused cars to overheat. Along the windy mountain roads were cement "barrels" filled with water to assist the unfortunate travelers whose cars overheated. It was on that trip that my dad explained to me why you never throw water on a hot engine. So as I stood there watching the borrowed car fill our neighborhood with smoke, I knew that water wasn't the answer. I had also learned (as a cub scout) that you should throw baking soda on an oven or grease fire, but I didn't know if (1) that strategy would work on an engine or (2) if we had that much baking soda.

Yes, this whole time I stood there and stared at it.

Heather, being prone to action in emergencies came running out of the garage with a 2 quart pitcher of water. She obviously hadn't been on our family vacation when I was 8.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" I asked.

It wasn't what she said but how she said it that counted.

"Put out the fire. Don't you think it will work?"

Her tone suggested that I didn't know what to do, and that I was just standing there being worthless, both of which were true at the time, which made it worse. Remembering that moment, I think I can relate to Adam's predicament in some very small way. I knew it was wrong, but what else could I do? So I threw the water on the car.

In the end it not only a harmless action, but also incredibly lame. The hood was closed, and thanks to General Motor's excellent hood design, the inadequate amount of water just drained over it without entering the engine comparment, i.e. where the fire was. I stood there holding the empty pitcher feeling stupid while the smoke continued to come. At this point, in my mind, the car was toast. If I didn't put it out somehow that unlikely ball of flame was going to become a reality. Maybe not by explosion, but probably a slow, depressing, consuming fire very close to my home.

Now there was motivation: our house. I ran to the back and grabbed a hose, turned on the water flow and pulled it to the front. I was just about to turn it on the car when there was a muffled pop and fluid leaked out from under the car. I sprayed the car a few times, but now the smoke was lessening, and I got the feeling that if it was going to get more exciting, it would have happened already. I had done everything I could think of, all of which was useless and wrong. The adrenaline from the possiblity of an explosion was gone, so I went inside and called my father-in-law feeling pretty stupid.

He just laughed.

So what will I do next time that I unknowingly set a borrowed car on fire? I will move my car out of the way. After that I will go inside and watch TV. It will be a lot more entertaining (for me), and lot less embarassing, and in the end, just as effective as anything I did in this story.