You know that feeling when you realize that your actions are going to be personally responsible for the entire neighborhood burning down to the ground?

No? I do.

But do you at least know that feeling when you realize that your actions could very easily set the whole lawn on fire?

No? Really? Hm. I do.

But, come on. Do you at least know that feeling when you realize that your actions could very easily leave your most cherished loved ones maimed and charred for life?

No? Like, really? Weird. I thought everyone would know those feelings.

I sure do after our first massively failed attempt at sending a sky lantern high into the troposphere.

It all started with one excited seven year old. A company long ago had sent a box full of “flying stuff,” and it has been sitting in Noah’s closet for, oh, I don’t know… Two years?

He finally drug it out, bored to death on a day when he wasn’t allowed on his iPad, and cranked it open.

It was admittedly a very neat box of stuff. It had all sorts of things in it for him to build. Within a couple hours he had built his very own wooden catapult. He had built his very own helicopter. And, he had prepared this ginormous sky lantern for us to light and send into the sky once the sun went down.

Now, it should be known that I am an expert with fire. As in, I am as expert as they come.

When I was a teenager I burnt down a good portion of my parents’ basement after setting a cardboard box full of jam onto the stove. Oh, and did I mention that my delightfully chubby teenage belly bumped against the knob turning the thing to high right before I left the room to drop a twosie? That was a fun one.

Another time I decided to make creme brûlée for some of my friends at Christmastime. As I was torching the sugar on top, I mindlessly raised the flame torch right at the face of the girl I was dating. I missed her hair and her face by, oh, I don’t know. 4mm. I singed a nice hole into her collar though. That was a fun one.

When I was eight, my parents forbade me to chop wood for the campfire. I ignored them because campfires are awesome when you’re eight. I stole my uncle’s hatchet and headed into the woods to make the best campfire ever. Oh, and then I chopped straight through my thumbnail and nearly severed the top of my thumb. All in the name of awesome fire. That was a fun one.

Another time I was making yams. I put too many marshmallows on top. With the size of the fire which erupted in the oven, you’d have thought I was cremating a body in there. The neighbors thought that one was real fun since my smoke alarms didn’t go off for an hour straight.

That resulted in a giant glob of melted rubber and plastic all over the stove where my brand new salt and pepper grinders had just barely stood so proudly. So strongly.

Rest in peace Halle and Oliver (that’s what I named the grinders). You were awesome for the three days I had you.

So. Anyway. Yes. I am an expert with fire. Which is why nothing should have ever gone wrong with something so simple and fun as a sky lantern.

At the end of the whole ordeal, and once the lantern was finally floating away, I looked back at my girlfriend who was vigorously stomping a lit fire out of the grass. Believe it or not, that was a moment of pure relief. Things were finally under control. For the moment.

Moments before, and it all happened so fast, things got crazy in a hurry.

Now, before I tell the rest of the story, you should know that Noah was very anxious for this sky lantern. He was swinging it around in the air before we ever lit it, and one of its major seams split wide open. Dad fixed it as best he could with Scotch tape, but there were still all sorts of little holes for extra oxygen to get inside. I didn’t think that’d matter too much. I guess it did.

We took the patched-up lantern outside and with one hand I held it up high in the air (I’m a giant, so high in the air really is high in the air). With the other, I lit one of those giant barbecue lighters and began igniting the fuel soaked paper which was attached to the underside.

Had it all gone perfectly, the lantern would have slowly filled up with hot air and lifted off gracefully.

Instead it was slightly more akin to that rocket launch from a few weeks ago. You know the one…

Also… It turns out I was not quite as giant as I thought I was.

I did not have quite the arm span I thought I did.

And in a matter of seconds, I was desperately trying to keep all the loose sides of this lantern from catching fire. To envision this, picture a frantic ogre dancing the Nutcracker. That was me in that moment.

And then I got it under control. Or so I thought.

The lantern finally started rounding out. The sides began expanding. It took form. It became light in my hands. I barely had any arm hair singed off at all. And all it needed now was a gentle nudge toward outer space.

I pushed it into the air.

The wind caught it. Sigh.

And instead of lifting off, it started flying high-speed sideways, toward this small sapling tree.

It nailed the tree head-on.

Flames dripped onto the grass below as the lantern struggled to free itself.

I couldn’t care about that, though, because the wind caught it again before I could catch up to it.

Are you remembering the ogre? That’s important as you envision me chasing a half-floating flaming sky lantern around the community grass area of our home.

I finally caught up to it before it did anymore damage.  I could hear Noah and my girlfriend screaming things behind me. But… I couldn’t be bothered to listen. The lantern was flapping viciously in a wind that I didn’t even realize existed when we started this whole thing. Flames were shooting and flaring in every which direction. At that point, I had one goal. Get that thing out of my face before my face became the bottom side of a Denny’s flapjack.

I held the fiery mayhem in front of me as long as I could. The lantern filled with hot air again. And this time, it slowly started lifting into the air.

SUCCESS!

Shit.

It didn’t go straight up this time, either. At all.

Again, the wind took it, and it went straight toward the roofs of the townhomes in front of us.

This was serious, folks.

This flying floating thing was a massive ball of fire.

And that ball of fire suddenly got bigger as the flame caught the sides of the lantern.

And there was nothing I could do except helplessly watch and start planning a hundred different ways to launch myself onto that four-home roof to stomp out what would soon be known as the Utah fires of 2014.

At the last possible moment, an updraft picked the lantern up and carried it into the sky. The homes were safe.

 

The lantern lifted higher. And higher. And higher.

 

This was when I looked over at my girlfriend and my child. Noah was screaming frantically as my girlfriend stomped out the now enflamed grass.

And I took a sigh of relief. No injuries. Nothing burned down.

I looked up again at the lantern which was sitting high in the sky, beautiful and red.

Then…

It started coming down.

And it started coming down fast.

Now, it was a good thing that it was so high up because it gave it time to finally snuff itself out on the way down.

It was also a bad thing that it was so high up because all three of us stood terrified for the longest time as we watched this flaming ball of fire head back down to earth, sure to land on another building somewhere, or a dry field, or a sweet baby in a baby carriage (let’s be honest, with how things were going that was the most likely scenario).

This was not going to end well.

“Is it out?” we kept saying as the flame kept disappearing into the blackness of the night for the smallest moments.

The flame would keep reappearing with a vengeance. “Nope, still going” we’d all say in unison.

“Please go out. Please go out. Please go out.” If I wasn’t saying it, I was thinking it. Hard.

Finally, about a hundred feet above the ground, the flame extinguished completely and our fears were qualmed. We heard no sirens in the moments that followed. We saw no smoke filling the sky. Disaster averted.

We laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed.

And I felt sheepish.

And we laughed some more.

In the end, my girlfriend told me, “I think we learned our lesson.”

I told her, “yep.” And I got on the internet and ordered an entire box of sky lanterns because… well… they’re pretty friggin’ cool.

Just don’t try any of that at home.

Read more:

Marriage vs. Addiction: Winning the Battle for Love

Marriage Without Intimacy: Can Love Survive the Distance?

Holding On or Letting Go: When Addiction Tests a Marriage

The Marriage We Almost Lost: How Unemployment Changed Everything

Marriage And Chaos: Finding Common Ground in Parenting

He Seemed Interested. So Why Didn’t He Call?

Online Dating Isn’t Desperation

Changing Your Dating Approach

Why Modern Dating is More Complicated Than Ever

Dating Someone With Debt

Marriage vs. Parenthood: Life After Having a Baby

The Fine Line Between Casual Dating and Commitment

How to Handle the Truth After Discovering a Betray