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Also, when I lived in Japan, I went off base and purchased fireworks. I wasn't old enough to go off base on my own (they didn't issue you a dependent's ID card until an age older than I was, so I had to sneak off. Over near the museum that was the Japanese Dreadnaught Mikasa, there was a hole in fence I was able to go under. That was a lot better than going over, which I had done, but even as stupid and dimwitted as only a nine year old kid can occasionally be, I recognized just how hazardous that was. I invariably tore clothes and incurred bloody scratches, but it was only a matter of time until something really bad happened. Anyway, I had gone off base and purchased a bunch of smoke bombs, which were spherical, painted in the color of smoke they would emit, and had a thick fuse protruding from them like a little Felix the Cat bomb. When I was walking back on base, usually I just walked right through. The Marines at the Main Gate never checked you coming back in (as a little kid) only leaving. Until today, that is.

As I came in, they stopped me and brought me into the little white guard shack they had there. They sat me in a chair, asked to see my ID, and when I couldn't produce one, said "Well, how do we know you aren't a spy? Who won the World Series this year?" When I said it was the St. Louis Cardinals (which had my favorite baseball player on the team, Lou Brock) they let me go. I laugh now, they were just a bunch of bored Marines who knew darn well who I was because my dad was in charge of base security, they were just busting my chops because they could.

So, I get home, and decide to go out behind my house with my slingshot, and fire some smoke balls through the air into the playground on the other side of the road.

After I had shot a few, one of the ones I shot landed in the un-mowed, dried grass of the playground. I could see even from where I was, that this was not going to be good, and I was right. The little smoke bomb was spitting out streams of sparks and smoke, and a large grass fire quickly developed. Fire trucks arrived, and I could see I was screwed. I looked out the same window I had hidden under when I nearly got caught shoplifting, and thought for sure they were going to walk right over to my house, but...they didn't.