Remember that game about reminiscing? You know the one, it’s called Reminiscing, and has a box that looks like this?
Here’s another memory that it threw up.
When I was about eight probably, my brother saved up all of his pocket money for the longest time, and one day came home with a a go-kart and a separate small single stroke petrol engine. The idea was to motorise the kart, and drive it.
Upon its first arrival, we managed to get hold of some petrol, which I think we stored in a Castrol GTX oil can. One of those bigger, boxy shaped ones, with the handle on the top. I’m not sure it was the best container for petrol, but you know, we were young.
Anyway, I don’t think we ever got the engine running, and we sure never got it installed on the go-kart. It was a hot, sunny evening, and we were getting frustrated with our lack of progress, so we took a break for a bit of a wheeze.
One of us, I don’t remember who, poured a small amount of the petrol onto the concrete outside of the garage, and popped the can down. A quick strike of a match later, and the small pool of liquid woofed into life, flames dancing nicely in the air.
It was safe enough.
Sort of.
A little gust of wind knocked the can on its side, and the fumes from the open top lit up.
Again, this wasn’t really that bad, but we realised that the can might catch, and that things might get worse.
“Stamp on it,” my brother said, meaning the small fire from the puddle.
I took it to mean ‘stamp on the can’.
For I am a moron.
I smacked my foot down on the can, and a flame shot across us, about four foot long.
It was rather cool.
And, you know, dangerous.
So we did it again.
Because it looked so good.
This would have been 1988 or so, and no-one died.
This has reminded me that, like a great many commercials at the time, the Castrol GTX one unnerved me slightly.
