He was at it again. John had once again gotten himself in trouble with the law. I don’t know how me, and John came to be friends, but he has been my best friend since second grade. Both me and John moved to Cincinnati at around the same time. John moved from Wisconsin, and I moved from Florida. We were both the new kids and we found refuge in each other. As John and I grew up together, I noticed something odd about John. He was always looking to make people laugh. This developed into John becoming a prankster. He would put tacks on the teacher’s seat when she would leave to get coffee, or he would call the local pizza shop and say he wanted to order 1 million pizzas. At the time, I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. As time went on his pranks became even more elaborate. One prank that stuck in my mind still to this day is on our senior year. I remember walking into my first period class and seeing a cow just standing there. Nobody knew how it got into the classroom but in the back of my head I knew it was John. He still hasn’t told me if it was him or not, but I know it was. Out of high school John and I both did not know what we wanted to be. We were some of the most average students in the world, there was nothing exceptional about us at all.

My dad told me “Son, you are either going to college or you are joining the navy. You are not staying in my house the rest of your life doing nothing.”

I didn’t want to have to go through more school, so I decided to join the navy. John decided to join with me because he did not know what he wanted to do with his life either. We applied to the navy and were sent to the Naval Station Great Lakes. We do not know why we were sent there, but we were. When we got there, I still remember how much of a shock it was that the instructors were already yelling at us. I don’t think I got a wink of sleep that entire week but somehow John was having the time of his life. It seemed to be his calling, for the first week, until his prankful ways came out. He somehow got a can of paint and put it on a slightly opened door that our commander would walk into every day to wake us up. When the commander opened the door, like normal, red paint spewed all over him. He was so mad we had to run for what felt like all day. Everyone was mad at John but somehow, he was still having fun. After a couple of months, we both had gotten used to the everyday motions of naval training. I had learned how to sail a boat by myself, and I learned how to hold my breath for almost 3 minutes.

After finally being accepted into the navy we were both stationed in north New York. We were given the weekend off because of our hard work. We were both ecstatic because we haven’t done what we wanted to in what felt like years. I thought that John was done with pranking because the instructors drilled him so hard for it. When he got in trouble the whole group would get in trouble, so a lot of the trainees didn’t like him. We were finally away from them, so we were happy. What I did not know was that John had a prank brewing inside of him like nothing I had ever seen before. Right as left the naval building John told me to hop into his car because we are going to be going to Home Depot. He had an idea for something fun we could do. When we got to Home Depot, we got a grill lighter, aluminum foil, lighter fluid, aerosol and a fire extinguisher. I tried to get him to tell me what we were doing but he refused. He began to drive us to the deep woods and pulled off the road. He told me to get out of the car and to start wrapping him in aluminum foil. I do now know what I thought was going to happen, but I listened todid not end up covering his face because how is he going to breathe if I do. I started to wrap him in aluminum foil. He kind of looked like a superhero, I He didn’t tell me what we were doing but after I wrapped him up, I still remember him telling me this, he said “Spray with me lighter fluid, then lights me up.”

I did not quite comprehend what he said at first. I just kept looking at him as he was giving me the lighter fluid. I was confused on why I have this. Then it was like a bomb went off in my head, I finally comprehend what he said.

I yelled “Dude, what are you talking about? There is no way that I am going to do that. You could literally die. Death is no joke, once you’re out your out.”

He just kind of looked at me and said one word, “Trust.”

I was dumbfounded, what does trust even mean. I wouldn’t trust any body to light me on fire and we do not even have the right equipment. I started listening in my head the worst possible things that could happen. As I was doing this, I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. It was just a red pickup truck driving down the road. It must have been weird for the driver to see men just standing on the side of the road in the middle of the road. John immediately snatched back the lighter fluid that I was holding onto delicately. He began to cover himself in lighter fluid. I tried to take it from him, but he was so slippery from the fluid, that I could not take it from him. We both lunged for the grill light because I did not know what was going to happen. We ended up playing tug of war with the grill light. But the lighter end of the grill light was facing me which was not good at all. I felt it start to burn my stomach, so I had to let go. In the next few seconds, John grabbed that light and light himself on fire. It was like I was watching a human sized burning man. He was not screaming or anything. He then grabbed the aerosol and began to spray it at the truck driving past us. As he was spraying it he held the grill light up to the can and it was like a dragon was spewing out fire. He was so bright I had to look away for a second. I could not imagine the heat inside of the aluminum foil. He started running at the car and I could see the drivers’ eyes widen like crazy. It was like something out of a horror movie. The driver slammed the gas pedal and zoomed off leaving just a cloud of dust behind him.

I never heard John laugh so hard. He was like a little kid at chuckie cheese smiling from ear to ear. He ended up just rolling around on the ground to put the fire out. I do not know how it worked but it did. He then started taking off the aluminum foil while laughing like a hyena. And I closed my eyes because I thought he as going to be burnt to crisp all over. Like over cooked bacon. I do not know how but when he took off the aluminum foil, he did not have a scratch on him.

John then grabbed the aluminum foil and started to wrap me like a mummy. I don’t know why I agreed to do it once, but I was so scared. I was literally shaking the entire time he was wrapping me.

 I felt like a mummy when he finished, he said “Trust it will work”.

Trust, Trust, Trust, that was the only word of encouragement he had. He started to spray me with the lighter fluid. I felt it seeping into the aluminum foil and onto my skin. I stated to hyper ventilate wondering if this is what is supposed to happen. I tried to start taking off the aluminum foil saying I was not going to do this anymore. But before I could start scratching it off, he lit me up. My eyes widened and I started running through the woods for any water source I could find. One big problem was I could not see at all because it was pitch black in the woods. I ended up running headfirst right into a tree and that knocked me back onto a pile of leaves. My head just started throbbing and I WAS STILL ON FIRE. I somehow was able to stand up, but I think I got a concussion. I was wobbling around like my legs were made of spaghetti and jumped into this little creek thing I had stumbled upon. The relief I felt was unmatched. I was so happy the fire was out. I was mad at John for lighting me on fire. I made the trek back to where we had parked the car and John was just standing their grinning. He wanted to go again. I think the adrenaline that he got from lighting himself on fire was like meth for a meth addict. It was the only thing he wanted at that moment.  

I wrapped him up and poured the lighter on him because after seeing it once I can at least trust that it will not hurt him. Every single time he came back he was happier than the last. We were almost out of aluminum foil so only one more person could go. I was A ok with not going again so I wrapped him up one final time. We then sat around waiting for another come down the road because he did not want to just light himself on fire and no one see or get scared. We finally saw a car coming out way. This car looked different than other cars, but we did not think anything of it. I poured the last of our lighter fluid on him and then lit him on fire.

Again, his laughter enveloped all of the sounds around us. John set his eyes on the car coming towards us and ran at him like a mad man. As I see him running at the car, I found it weird that it had big lights on the top of it. I just thought it was nothing but then I saw the red and blue lights flashing. It was a cop car. John stopped in his tracks while still lit on fire. The cop car slowly speeding toward him as if it was wary of him. The officer stopped the car almost 30 feet away from John. And a huge officer walked out, he must have been 6’4 250 or something around that. He had a fire extinguisher and started running towards John. His eyes were one of a deer in headlights, but he kept running. He clicked the fire extinguisher and started getting all of the fire off of John. John just stood there without saying a word like he was star struck or something.

After the officer got all of the fire off of him he yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING”

We both, like a little kid caught doing something bad, said in unison “Nothing.”

The officer looked infuriated. He immediately put handcuffs on the both of us. He had us sit in the grass right next to the woods. He was just walking back and forth lecturing both of us on the horrors of fire. We both were just staring at him with zero thoughts in our heads. It was in one ear out of the other ear. The officer was talking to us for about an hour telling us that we are both idiots and we should not be doing that. He was trying to find a rule in the police handbook that we had broken so he could take us in. But because it was voluntary, we did not get arrested for arson. He eventually took the cuffs off of us an sent us on our way.

We packed up all of our stuff and left the woods and went back to our naval base. On the ride there I did not say a word, I was pretty mad at John for dragging me into this. The entire time he was happy as can be, laughing. I was surprised to say the least. After that day I did not see much of John because we were sent on two different missions. I was sent to a base in Hawaii and John was sent to a base in Japan. With us going our different ways I left the navy after ten years of service. I ended up moving to a small city in Wisconsin and became a dentist. I have two kid and a loving wife. John, on the other hand ended up staying in the military. He became a navy officer of the biggest fleet of war ships in the world.