by Andrew Farkas
July 1, 2008

The first thought to hit his mind while floating along: how chilly it is! Extremely chilly. Frigid. Arctic. Antarctic, even. The man had certainly not experienced such depths of mercury back home. But where was home? Was home located in a tropical clime, making the previous assertion of inexperience unsurprising? (Might "depths," therefore be the wrong word?) Or did he hail from a far northerly or southerly area, hence making the "depths of mercury" statement a startling revelation since such a person ought to be acclimatized to a frosty atmosphere? How truly glacial it must be if he is getting chilblains! Yet the man's thoughts did not drift to his origins. He merely thought of the cold.

Well, how to get warm? The obvious answer: fire. Fire makes people warm, and therefore the man would build a fire. Which should be easy. To build a fire, one only needs wood, paper for kindling (although dry leaves would do), a lighter or match (flint and steel would also work (and if it came down to it, one could rub two sticks together which, mind you, was good enough for the Pioneers when they were in the same situation (were the Pioneers ever in this particular situation?))), stones to contain the blaze, roasting marshmallows would be nice, but if one is to roast marshmallows:

1) One ought to invite his friends because

A) It is damned depressing roasting marshmallows by oneself, and

B) One can only roast marshmallows while telling ghost stories; but if ghost stories are to be told:

(1) One should know which ghost stories to tell to the group gathered (for instance, if there are children, the ghost stories should be scary in a very simplistic way so the yougins will ultimately go to sleep, whereas if there are adults present the ghost stories should either be terrifying or hilarious not the "inside joke" kind of hilarity, however; those ghost stories should be reserved for teenagers, who literally revel, revel in "inside jokes") or filled with sexual innuendoes (nudge, nudge, har, har and all that which makes people reply, "'Nuff said," although more properly it should be, "'Nough said), and

(2) One should know which of the group members are the best tellers, in turn giving them the utmost attention, while cracking jokes and providing ludicrous sidebars during the stories told by those who are not as skilled;

2) One ought to know the proper type of stick to roast a marshmallow on: do you use sharpened sticks from the woods or those steel implements that resemble great long streak stabbers from the grocery store (they even have ones that rotate mechanically! (but then one must think of batteries and battery chargers and biodegradable vs. the cheapest damned batteries one can find, and we definitely don't want to go off on that track))?; and while speaking of roasting marshmallows, the topic of Smores must be broached for there will certainly be those amongst the invited who will wonder why the campleader has decided to skimp on the chocolate and graham crackers and only provide marshmallows to angle over the flames: do you want to be the kind of person who leaves his fellow fire afficionados unfulfilled?, one assumes not, no matter where you might be; but one also needs to think about providing hot dogs, Smores being technically a dessert food and, although occasionally tempting, most personages (folks, shall we say?) do not want to eat only dessert foods; but when supplying hot dogs, one needs to remember to supply regular hot dogs, kosher hot dogs, turkey dogs (for those who do not eat beef), and soy hot dogs (for those who do not sully their palates with the flesh of deceased animals), and, needless to say (but said anyhow), mustard, catsup, relish, cheese, sauerkraut, chili, potato chips, coleslaw, potato salad, soda pop, beer, and you need to make sure that the children do not stab each other with the grocery store marshmallow sticks (that spin mechanically) while devouring the chocolate and throwing the marshmallows and graham crackers at each other (also possibly dumping the potato salad into the coleslaw (pocotaletoslasaldaw?)); finally, to build a fire, one needs to make sure that there is plenty of space. You do not want to burn the entire forest down. You do not want the children to fall into the flames. You do not want the drunken adults to see if they can jump over the fire.

But as long as the man could gather together these few accoutrements, floating along, he could have a fire. Which would keep him warm. Because it was awfully...well, there was a bit of a nip in the air, no doubt about it.

So, where to get started? The man certainly didn't know the area, so finding a grocery store where all the food and mechanically spinning steak stabbers could be purchased might be a problem. Which might mean no marshmallows, let alone chocolate or graham crackers for Smores. Soy hot dogs, right out. And there were no pay telephones (having misplaced his cell phone somewhere (would this be considered a Roaming call? (one always needs to be marking the Roaming areas in order to guard against exorbitant charges))), so it might be difficult to contact anyone (but without any marshmallows or mechanically spinning steak stabbers would it even be appropriate to call one's friends? (not to mention the complete lack of Smores materials?)). Also, to be perfectly honest, there weren't any stones around to contain the fire; hence it might be dangerous to build one in the first place. Which in itself might be a moot point because, well, to put it plainly, there didn't appear to be any trees. And without trees there aren't any leaves to start the fire with, any branches to get the fire going, any logs to sustain the conflagration, any forest to protect against the possible ravages of the flames, any pulp-paper companies to manufacture paper which will carry the story of how the man burned the entire place down because of improper containment. What there was plenty of, however: space. Space in which to build a fire.

There was space.

And, oh!, the man just remembered. He had brought his lighter along flint and steel be damned. So he flicked the lighter. And for a brief instance he saw a spark. Or thought he did. And then, again, he began to wonder what one needed to build a fire. And this time he realized what was missing. In order to build a fire, the first thing one needs is