Genius Lights Self on Fire with Own Smartness

July 23rd, 2004 Posted in News and Reviews

So you’re fifteen years old, hanging out with a friend, and you’re bored. You’ve spent the afternoon shooting fireworks at each other, but now the fireworks are all gone and all you’re both still tragically unexploded. What do you do?

If you answered “translate Wittgenstein from its original German” or “learn calculus,” you’re real close. What fifteen-year-old Thomas Jefferson did, in loving tribute to the ingenuity and legacy of his namesake, was—and I honestly need you to sit down for this—took his shirt off, poured gasoline all over it (or as Thomas knows it, ‘rainbow fun-water’), put the shirt back on, and (this next part’s the sit-down part) lit himself on fire. That intense heat you’re feeling on your skin right now is actually coming from Jefferson’s parents, who are no doubt beaming with pride.

Covering himself with gasoline, it turns out, was only step one of Thomas Jefferson’s genius-level plan–step two was getting his friend to do the same so that they could light each other on fire. Sadly, Jefferson was unable to carry out the plan to its conclusion, as it turns out burning at the center of a towering flesh-melting inferno leaves you with little time to help your buddy soak his Pennywise shirt in gas.

A fifteen-year-old did this, keep in mind. Not a six-year-old. A fifteen-year-old, who had seen fire before and –this is the essential part–knew what fire does. He didn’t do it because of Jackass. Not because of Eminem. Not because of Doom or Marilyn Manson. He did it because his friend had run out of fireworks to shoot at him. According to the article, local authorities are calling it a “horrible lesson about the dangers of fire,” that lesson apparently being that it’s hot. If so, A+ to Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson’s friends are being charged with felony arson, aggravated assault and criminal wrecklessness, if only because lighting morons on fire who ask you to doesn’t tend to come up often enough to be a crime. Common sense might dictate that if someone rolls around in gas for ten minutes before getting you to throw matches at them, they might actually be as much to blame for the ensuing mushroom-cloud hilarity as you are. At the same time, until legislation is finally passed to allow us to light fifteen year olds on fire, it’s sort of assumed that when the police show up to talk to you and your friends, and one of you is a charcoal briquette giving a “devil” sign, someone’s gonna have to get charged with something.

Jefferson is expected to remain in a drug-induced coma for the next couple of weeks. Doctors say his condition is stupid, but may stabilize to merely hilarious by week’s end.