Burning Man

My son had a G.I. Joe that was missing a few limbs. He asked me if he could burn him at the stake.

me (in my head):My 9 year-old son wants to burn his G.I. Joe. Hummm...Do I need to be worried about his mental stability? Well, as far as I know, he isn't killing and/or torturing animals... No problems here.
me:O.K. Let's do it.

Site Preparation

I didn't want to damage our yard, so I used a 24"x24" piece of 26-gauge sheet metal I had lying around.

I used a small piece of wood and and dowel to create a stand to which we would tape Joe.

For the accelerant, we used a a rag soaked in gasoline. We wrapped the gasoline soaked rag around Joe's feet and and legs.

As a final precautionary measure, we got the garden hose ready.

Ignition

Wow. The gasoline rag was good idea. It was really cool looking. It reminded me of an anal bum cover. The kids cheered as Joe fueled a three foot intensely hot flame. Sherry started to get nervous when a column of dark black smoke rose from our backyard. The kids continued to cheer as they danced around our sacrificial flame.

A few minutes into our experiment, Joe's flame engulfed head fell off and rolled onto the sheet metal. This event caused the kids to cheer even louder. The remainder of Joe's body started to melt onto the wooden stand. This is when we (Sherry and I) decided to put out the flame. The kids really liked the sizzling sound the water made when it came in contact with the "protective sheet metal". It was then that I realized that the sheet metal probably didn't do what I'd hoped it would do. We all stood around the steaming black corpse, formerly known as G.I. Joe. The kids were quiet now and grinning ear to ear.

Cleanup

me:OK, let's throw this mess out.
sherry:Wait! Lets save his head.
me:You want to save a burnt G.I. Joe head?
sherry:Yeah. I want to but it in our hope chest.
me (in my head):My wife wants to save a burnt G.I. Joe in our hope chest. Hummm...do I need to be worried about her mental stabililty? No problems here.
me:OK, I'll get a plastic bag.

After we cleaned up the site, I realized that maybe using highly conductive sheet metal wasn't the best choice for protecting our grass. We now have a 24"x24" patch of brown grass in our backyard.

The Fallout

Two days later at "Back to School" night, some teachers were questioning me about the G.I. Joe incident. I guess Sherry told them. They wanted to know if we tried to burn anything else. Perhpas they were worried that my kids would try to burn things on their own. I don't think they were too pleased.

The neighbor kids asked if they could bring over some action figures to burn. I think they may have seen our smoke signals. I said no. I gotta draw the line somewhere.