Coyote's Den

When I was a teenager, someone gave my mother a book by George Hayduke, called "Getting Even." For anyone who hasn't seen these books, they are incredibly funny... provided you have a penis, are fairly immature, and are the sort of person who laughs at the Three Stooges. They contain all sorts of juvenile pranks - most of which, if you have even a high-school understanding of physics, are exaggerated, embellished, or made up out of whole cloth.

Needless to say, my mother handled the thing like it was a dead cockroach. There's something about having two X chromosomes that automatically lets you know when something is puerile, dangerous, and stupid.

Naturally, at the time, I thought it was the greatest book in the entire universe. I was fifteen or so, nerdy, immature, and in possession of only one precious X chromosome. I theorize that the reason Y chromosomes are shorter is because they are missing the parts of human DNA that tell us how to find a gallon of milk in the refrigerator, and that tell us we should never try to set fire to anything without a damn good reason.

That missing part of genetic matter is clearly the one that contains the code that would otherwise prevent a normal, rational adult from ever doing anything that prompts them to say "Hey! Bubba! Watch this!" immediately before inspiring their own obituary.

Anyway, one of the entries in this glorious book, clearly written with the adolescent male in mind (which is basically about how to do mean things to people who have offended you, but whom you are afraid to just punch in the nose) was "How to make a smoke bomb."

The article claimed that a pound of the substance described could cover a city block in thick smoke.

My gods. I had to make this. Just think of the possibilities... why.. why... could... well... cover a city block in smoke! Mwa ha ha!

Basically, it said to mix two parts ammonium chloride (which you used to be able to get in children's chemistry sets, before they figured out that chemistry sets in the hands of anyone under the age of thirty, or who have a Y chromosome are dangerous when fully stocked), with three parts of sugar. Perhaps it was the other way around - I don't remember.

It said that you should carefully melt the sugar and ammonium chloride together over low heat, until it was a single gooey mass, and then leave it to cool. It then went further, and said that the resulting substance would be easier to light if you pushed match-heads into it while it was still warm and gooey.

So... I went to the local science hobby store, and convinced the proprietor to sell me a whole lot of ammonium chloride. He was a little suspicious, but not as suspicious as he was the time I bought a half pound of saltpeter to make black powder and fireworks with.

Anyone who would sell chemicals to a fifteen-year old boy is completely irresponsible. You'd be better off selling it to terrorists, who, presumably, at least know what they are doing, and who are, I presume, okay with setting themselves on fire or blowing themselves up, as long as their smoking bodies land somewhere near God, Allah, or whichever other deity will then say "Dammit, I thought I told you primates to be nice to each other!"

So... I get home, and smuggle my prize into my bedroom. At the time, I had a nice glass-topped desk to play with my various chemistry-set (for which read "make your own fireworks") projects.

Educational my ass. Those things are supposed to teach kids chemistry. My idea of chemistry came from Wile E. Coyote, not Mr. Wizard. I used to make little robots out of the molecular modeling kits - they were like tinkertoys!

Anyway, I carefully melted the sugar and ammonium chloride down. I'd decided that I didn't want to do anything too dangerous, especially since I hadn't performed this particular procedure before - and some of my smaller experiments had already resulted in some terrifying smells and strange burnt spots on my flesh from time to time.

Nope... I was going to be very responsible and proceed with caution. I decided to make only a half pound of this stuff.

All went well. The sugar melted down and partly caramelized, and the whole thing looked great. Didn't even catch fire or anything.

I let it cool for a couple of minutes, but remembered that before it cooled completely, I was supposed to embed match-heads in it, to help with lighting it later. So... I snipped the heads off some matches, and using forceps, began gingerly forcing them into the mass of smoke-bomb material.

Did you know that when sugar is hot enough to still be semi-liquid, that it is also hot enough to ignite a match head?

About a second after the first one went in, as I was preparing to insert the second, the first match head bust into flame, and the entire block of stuff instantly went "FFFOOOMF!" and in about a split-second, the entire block had converted it's mass into - you guessed it - enough smoke to cover half a city block.

Except this was in my bedroom, which was approximately ten feet by seventeen feet (it was a converted garage).

The entire room was immediately filled with thick, choking whitish smoke that reduced visibility to absolute zero. It didn't smell good, either. I inhaled a whole bunch, because it startled me. So I found myself staggering around, disoriented, trying to find the door.

So... I get to the far end of the room (tripping over more furniture than I even knew I had, and getting myself even more turned around), and fumble around until I feel a doorknob.

Now... my bedroom had two doors - one leading outside, into the back yard (the ultimate teenager's bedroom - concrete floors that didn't squeak, on the opposite side of the house from my mother's room, and with a door leading outside!).

The other door, of course, led into the rest of the house.

Now... I could not breathe, and didn't know for sure if I'd set fire to the house or not, although I didn't feel any heat. So I had to open a door before I passed out. Did I have the right door, in my blinded and disoriented state?

Just as I was about to turn the knob, from the other side of the door, I heard the voice of Nauni, my sainted grandmother, asking, "What are you doing in there?"

What was I doing?!?

"Nothing!!!" I croaked out, in perfect swallowed-a-burning frog tones of voice.

"Oh. Okay, sweetie!" she said. I love my grandmother. To this day, I'm sure she knew damn well when us kids were up to something, but that she liked to warn us that we were under supervision while also giving us a chance at plausible deniability, and to hide the evidence of whatever we were stopping doing that instant now that we were caught.

So... I lurched to the other door, flung it open, and staggered out into blessed fresh air. Well... not fresh really. I lived in Miami, and anyway, when I opened the door, the smoke billowed out along with me.

I caught my breath, and eyes watering, went back into the room to make sure there was no fire. My grandmother was in the house, after all, so I couldn't just leave, run away, change my name, and catch a bus to Alaska before my mother came home, which would otherwise have been the plan. My mother was never a reasonable woman at the best of times, and coming home to a house filled with smoke - or burnt to the ground - would have ended in my eulogy. My eulogy or an unmarked grave.

Fortunately, the stuff had peacefully converted to smoke and not fire. Or perhaps there just wasn't enough oxygen left. I'd done this little procedure on a glass surface, and for good measure, the block of good in it's metal dish was on a slab of concrete. So, no real damage.

Except for the smoke. Fortunately, since I know better than anyone what happens when coyotes play with matches or chemicals or tools, I'd had a towel stuffed under the door to the rest of the house before I even began.

So... I got my fan, positioned it in the door, and blew the rest of the smoke out of the house.

I staggered back inside, went to the kitchen, and got something to drink. My grandmother asked me if I was okay - she said I looked a little funny. I told her I was fine, and she gave me a suspicious look, but went back to whatever she'd been doing. I thank my lucky stars that my grandmother had no sense of smell whatsoever. She'd been smoking Pall Malls so long that you could have stuffed a dead skunk under the living room couch and she wouldn't have smelled anything. It's not that I was afraid she'd kill me. My mother would have killed me. No... my grandmother would have just given me that armor-piercing "I'm very disappointed," look for a second or two, and I'd need therapy to recover. I swear, she could inflict more guilt with a single twitch of an eyelash than a whole army of normal Jewish or Italian grandmothers could normally do with a whole day of nagging.

It was then that I glanced out the window and saw that the whole backyard - no... the whole neighborhood was covered in - as promised - thick smoke.

I ran back to my room, yanked in the fan, and went into the living room and pretended to read a book. A little while later, my grandmother came back down, wondering why the hell there were fire trucks circling the block. When the knock on the door came, she assured the confused and irritated-looking fireman that no, our house was on fire. She called out to me, "Are you doing anything with fire, sweetie?"

I croaked out, from behind my book, "No (gasp, choke) I'm not (gasp wheeze) burning anything, Nauni. Who's at the door?"

The fireman went away, still looking suspicious. By the time they'd gotten there, the smoke had dispersed all over the block. They pestered some of the people in the other houses, and then eventually left, presumably to rest and relax, or perhaps fight a real fire set by some other teenager who tried mixing George Hayduke with Mr. Wizard.

At least, on this occasion, I kept my eyebrows.