11. "I lit my moms ex husbands shirt on fire when I was about 8." In response to In response to 0
He was wearing the shirt at the time.
They had separated and we were transient at the time. He brought us out to this house he was living in. This is Perris, Ca, in a woodsy area out in the boonies. We get there and there’s no electricity. I can’t remember if there was running water.
So dinner is on a barbecue grill and there was a separate fire pit. Anyhow they do their usual number of drinking followed by a fight of some kind. My mom had just had my baby brother a few months prior. At some point in the fight he had her pinned down on the bed with my baby brother in the mix, screaming his head off. I ran in and saw him on top of her, pinning her down with one hand and hitting her with the other.
So I ran out and grabbed this big ass palm branch, doused it in lighter fluid and made myself a torch. I ran in the room and shoved the flaming branch up his back under his shirt and he jumped. I got the branch all the way up his back and his shirt caught fire. I really don’t recall how the cops showed up because there was no phone to call.
Anyhow a few days later we had to stay at his parent’s house for a night. His mom said they had to scrape bits of the Harley Davidson decal off his back. I’m not sure how true that part is. I know he had some burns and he had some difficulty getting the branch out and then getting his shirt off, but now that I think about it I’m not sure there was enough time for the decal to melt like that. His whole family is fucking looney and all night we heard his mom and dad fighting. We heard broken glass and some pounding on a wall at one point. Shit was scary as fuck.
He wound up getting sober and moving on with his life. He took custody of my baby brother and gave him a pretty solid life. I’ve never seen anyone turn their life around like that. I wound up becoming pretty close to him after I got placed in foster care about five years after this incident. Sadly he died of cancer about 8 years ago.