So… Remember when I told you about my husband’s penchant for leaving things unattended in the kitchen, and how I’m constantly after him to not burn down my house?
Well.
Mr Fever hasn’t burned down our house (yet), but I am beginning to see where his distracted lackadaisical attitude toward burning/fiery things might come from.
Because, you see…
Right about the time my husband was receiving a kidney transplant, we got word that my hubby’s stepfather managed to set his house on fire.
Yes. My father-in-law (we’ll call him FIL because I can’t very well call him by his real name here on my blog) is a pyro.
FIL is… different. He was second husband to my spouse’s mother (she died in 2018, so thank God she wasn’t *in* the house when FIL set it alight), and he suffered a brain injury prior to their marriage. He’s quite brilliant, but also more than a little bit obsessive. His brain damage did not prevent him from working (he was an engineer when he was young and employed), but he can’t seem to let go of an idea once it gets hold of him – not even for a moment – and socially he has many of the same tendencies as manifest in individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome.
Apparently one of FIL’s… issues… has long been to do with fire. When my husband’s mother was alive, FIL would try to burn things (and by ‘things’ I mean leaves, twigs, bits of string, cereal boxes, coffee filters, or any other seemingly flammable item) in their inoperable fireplace, which sent smoke billowing through their crumbling Victorian monstrosity of a house regularly. He also, because of some strange idea he came up with that newspaper should not be recycled (WTF?!), would — for years — collect newspapers and then burn them outside.
I repeat: Instead of recycling newspapers, he would burn them.
Outdoors.
In the city.
Not using a burn barrel.
Which is, to my knowledge, illegal. As well as highly dangerous.
DANGEROUS.
As was proved when, on a blustery day in May, he burned said papers too close to the house, setting the outer wall of his kitchen on fire, and intimately sending that entire section of the house up in flames.
So.
While my hubby’s attempts to burn my kitchen down have so far been mitigated, I am now even more vigilant than ever when it comes to being on firebug watch.
(And when hubs attempts to walk away from an open flame, I’ve taken to calling him FIL.)
There’s a lot to be said for genetics. Some things just run in families. (Some folks have generationally receding hair lines, or a tendency toward weak chins or fat knees. Other inherited traits are more serious. Like susceptibility to certain diseases or addictions, or just plain poor decision-making abilities that lead to one or the other. In my family, for instance, there’s Bad Taste In Men. And cancer shows up too often for comfort. And mental illness runs. Or rather, it sprints.)
Those things, of course, are just… blood. Thicker than water and all that.
BUT
There *is* such a thing as ‘inheriting’ traits via learned behavior{s} as well. And the behavior my spouse learned from FIL is, apparently, burning down the house.
In all fairness, my husband is un-learning that trait. Slowly.
But I’ve made sure there are fresh batteries in all the smoke detectors, just in case.
This post is part of my Music As Muse September Song Project, which you can learn more about by clicking the badge above.
Post title borrowed from the song title Burning Down The House by Talking Heads.
My dad was never so happy as when he had a good aerosol can to toss in the burn barrel.
Seems to be kind of a genetic thing.
(Don’t ask me how I know this…)
Jz recently posted…Singin’ – Rain or… Shine?
Oh my…
Explosive genetics are a thing, apparently. 😱
Oh myyyy.. you have me singing and laughing through this post. I understand the firebug gene very well. My brother would try to set our mom’s houseplants on fire and got suspended in middle school for lighting paper towels on fire in the boy’s restroom at school. S on the other hand has a fire extinguisher in almost every room. I just shake my head at the extremes these men have. Haha
Hubby got a new grill this summer, and I can’t help but feel a little worried at his gleeful enthusiasm over lighter fluid and matches… 😱
A great song!
Collaredmichael recently posted…Music as Muse 2
It always reminds me of the movie Revenge of the Nerds, when the jocks burn their frat house down at the beginning.
Hahahaha — all men are born fire-bugs, deep down. We can’t help ourselves…. F I R E – G O O D. 😀
Hmmm… A bit of a caveman thing, perhaps? (The discovery of flint must have been a helluva thing…) 😉
It took a lot of strokes to figure that stuff out, I bet. 😀
( of course, we already know who really discovered fire – a redhead ! )
Hahaha! 😛
You’re post makes me be grateful that my apartment has a fire escape ladder. Granted, I’d end up in an alleyway with hundreds of rats, but given the options, I wouldn’t be complaining. You have a colorful family!
Oh yes, they are quite the rainbow. 😉
This made me giggle! You better stay on fire watch, Feve!
Rebel xox
Maybe I should be a firefighter for Halloween. 😛 🙂
Oh my! Fire blankets at the ready!
It’d be a good idea.
Great post – my brother set our kitchen alight when I was about 8. He decided to make chips and well once the fire was raging he threw water on it! Apparently – so the story goes – I ran out on to our street shouting “FIRE FIRE HELP, our house is burning down.” – I don’t remember that bit though. I always felt I was a calm kid and ran across the road to a neighbour who came over and put it out. But who knows. Memories are a funny thing 😉
May More recently posted…Spank me Red
Oh my — !!!
Fire and water are two things I have a healthy respect for, as they can both be dangerous. And the two don’t go together very well in the case of a grease/oil-based flame, so the fact that your brother threw water on a kitchen fire probably made a bad situation worse. Yikes!