The Day We Burned Doug Richter

It was a summer day dressed in boredom For four suburban Ohio boys Looking for some excitement In their banal lives from their banal toys We took some old models of Navy ships To a distant wooded stream Armed with a box of blue tip matches And mason jars filled with gasoline We loaded up the ships Full of the flammable fuel And set them adrift in the stream Thinking we were kind of cool Then Jonsey had an idea On how to create an eternal flame As he slowly poured gas from his jar Into a ship that towards him came Before the words escaped our mouths That his idea was a foolish one The flame shot up the stream of gas And his jar he quickly flung Some landed on my bare legs Singing adolescent hair before patted out Then suddenly I was aware Of the words Johnny started to shout “Drop and roll, drop and roll,” he did scream I knew his instructions weren’t intended for me I looked up and saw a dancing figure of fire Doug was aflamed from head to knee I was headed towards him to make a tackle When he dropped and rolled on his own The fire was quickly doused But he was already severely burned Doug bravely walked home alone To tell a story that didn’t implicate us As we watched hidden from down the street His parents take him to the hospital in a rush We moped in guilt for hours that day Before we decided we had to confess So we made our way back to Doug’s house And gave it our very best Doug was going to be okay A few scars and plenty of pain His parents made us make a vow Never to play with fire again I wore jeans the rest of that summer To hide my bare, red legs from my Mom and Dad They never knew the part that I played In this saga that turned out bad As future summers came along We accepted the boredom quite solemnly Not wanting to repeat that day We tried to escape the banality