I was guilty of similar stunts when I was a kid. Thank God it was before the internet. Here is the story. I am sure members here can add some of their childhood adventures to this one.
BTW the picture on the website is priceless!

MCKINNEY, Tex. — A family in Texas found themselves doing damage control on Christmas Day after their 12-year-old son accidentally set their lawn on fire with a magnifying glass.

Nissa-Lynn Parson posted photos on Facebook of what she said is going down in the family history book as one of the most memorable Christmas Days to date.

“My 12-year-old son Cayden received a magnifying glass, which we thought was for reading, but instead he tried to see if he could light a fire with it,” the post said.

Cayden and his two brothers went out in the driveway after opening presents to “burn a couple of holes in some newspaper” with the magnifying glass he had just received when an unexpected fire broke out, Parson told CNN. The wind caught the newspaper and blew embers into the lawn, ultimately causing the grass to catch fire.

“Everything was under control until the boys came running into the house telling us that a corner of the lawn was on fire and the Christmas lights were melting,” Parson wrote in her post. She said she knew the kids were out playing in the front lawn and this was an honest accident that could have happened to anyone.

She said she’s glad the family was able to contain it before it got worse.

In the photos posted on Facebook, the Parson clan, in matching pajamas, can be seen with garden hoses in hand, dousing the front yard of their McKinney, Texas, home with water to extinguish the flames, leaving parts of the grass burnt to a crisp.

“We grabbed buckets, Justin turned the sprinklers on, and I grabbed blankets to smother and trap it – before it could spread any more into the neighbors yard,” Parson wrote in her post. “What a sight to see – a bunch of people running around crazy trying to put a front lawn fire out while wearing matching Christmas jammies!”

Parson and her husband, Justin, said they weren’t surprised that Cayden asked for a magnifying glass for Christmas because he’s an avid reader, very curious and interested in science.

“It’s like a basketball player asking for basketball shoes,” she said.

The other items on Cayden’s Christmas wish list were books, a piano keyboard and a robot building model kit, Parson said.

The next-door neighbor whose grass was a little burned was just glad it wasn’t worse and was good-natured and pleasant about the incident, according to Justin Parson.

“The other neighbors felt bad they didn’t see it to help put it out,” he said.

Cayden was shocked and surprised to see what his magnifying glass was capable of doing, according to his mother.

“Instead of a tragedy, it will now be a Christmas to remember,” she said.

LINK: https://wgntv.com/2019/12/30/1...et-his-lawn-on-fire/

Well, giving an inquisitive 12 yr old boy a magnifying glass is akin to Prometheus giving man fire!

Kinda like my cousin told my grandpa about his empty kerosene can: "Grandpa, when you left it out there, you KNOW'D I'd get into it!"

(Note: I absolutely deny any knowledge of setting fire to a neighbor's fencepost back in 1952 - and besides, the statute of limitations has run out on that small indiscretion.

The difference is that when we (those of us born in the last century), took the magnifying glass to burn ants and other bugs we were able to control the conflagration.

Why couldn't the kid have just stomped out the fire when it started?

This kid will grow up and vote. Yikes, I did not expect something like this in 2020.

quote:

“Everything was under control until the boys came running into the house telling us that a corner of the lawn was on fire and the Christmas lights were melting,”

That's where I guffawed and startled the dog.

Been there; done that. But not Christmas day. And my parents never found out. But to be fair the fire never spread toooooo far....

When I was about 9, my best buddy and I were playing with a magnifying glass on his back porch. They lived in an upstairs apartment, so the "porch" was a balcony, with no access off of it except into the house. Things rapidly got out of hand, as one can imagine, and when my buddy went into the house to get water, his dad figured out what was going on and his eyes just about bugged out of his head. Thankfully it was extinguished before any real damage was inflicted.

I was persona-non-grata around the Anderson house for a while after that, and when my buddy's mom finally arranged for me to come over again, I remember his dad muttering something about "the last time he was over here they set the back porch on fire." We were a lot more careful after that, and there were no more out of control fires except for one time when we were juniors in high school involving some ants, hairspray, and match in the kitchen hallway...but that's another story .

quote:

Originally posted by djinco:
The difference is that when we (those of us born in the last century), took the magnifying glass to burn ants and other bugs we were able to control the conflagration.

Why couldn't the kid have just stomped out the fire when it started?

That's exactly what happened when one of my friends brought a magnifier to school in the 3rd grade in the fall of 1971. We had a little conflagration at the far reaches of the 'yard' at recess. We ran around stamping it out furiously until it was gone. And what happened at recess stayed at recess.

Did the mom really believe she was buying a 12 year old a magnifying glass to read.

Guess I was a bit older, but I had more fun.

I found a big lens at a yard sale. About 10 inches across actually. Knew enough that I'd need a welders mask to use it.

Boiling shingles, splitting rocks, melting aluminum? Simple. Burning wood and drawing out designs and patterns was tricky as I had to keep the stuff moving before it was toast.

If I had pearls, I would be clutching them right now. I never guessed that I would be around so many intentional fire bugs.
I was fortunate enough to limit my accidental fire setting to a grocery bag full of fireworks. Never sweep anything with the muzzle of a lit Roman candle that you don’t want to set fire.

quote:

Cayden and his two brothers went out in the driveway after opening presents to “burn a couple of holes in some newspaper” with the magnifying glass he had just received when an unexpected fire broke out,

That line cracked me up... Went to burn stuff, surprised when it burned?

My lawn fire story was about 12, maybe 13 years old. Was playing with gas and matches while parents were out of town (I was staying with friends parents). Burnt a good 2'x2' section of grass.
Trying to cover my tracks I set the lawnmower a inch lower, mowed the lawn and sprinkled grass clippings over the burnt area. I don't think my parents were home for an hour before I was caught.

Ok, I'll tell one on myself.

When I was probably five or six, I found a can of "starter pistol" .22 acorn blanks in my dad's stuff. He was a school principal and had a starter pistol for kids track meets.

Went out on the side walk behind the house and went to work on the blanks with a claw hammer!

I wasn't home alone and I remember setting quite a few of them but don't remember any "consequences"? Just remember banging the hell out of them things.

Us brothers and some neighbor kids playing "Army" in the field behind the house. We had a campfire going in a safe spot but my brother decided to take some fire with him in an old paint bucket when he went on "patrol"... Went fine until the can got too hot to hold and he dropped it. Thankfully it was getting dark and the grass was coming in case. We got the resulting grass fire out but not before it burned about a half acre.

I carried a magnifying glass to school once, about 4th grade IIRC. A few of us spent recess burning leaves and ants etc... no one thought anything of it and no one got in trouble for it. Different times...

Hell, I managed to burn about 50 acres of our pasture off when I was about that age. I was supposed to be burning the trash pile, but a brown sugar box with the wax paper liner distracted me into making a fire grenade, which I heaved out into the dry switchgrass. LMAO (now).

Fortunately the wind was blowing away from our house and my Uncle was the local Fire Marshall.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:

“My 12-year-old son Cayden..."

Well there's your problem right there.

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:
Did the mom really believe she was buying a 12 year old a magnifying glass to read.

That one had me scratching my head. Looking at things a bit closer, sure. Reading? Ummm, no.

Growing up in El Paso, I used to power-fry fire ant colonies that would spring up in the cracks of the sidewalk and driveway with a magnifying glass. Glad I never set fire to the lawn, though. There’s no 12 year old kid growing up in Texas that doesn’t know what you can do with a magnifying glass, but I guess for all “Cayden” knows about the sun, he still wasn’t learned up on that “wind” stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:
Did the mom really believe she was buying a 12 year old a magnifying glass to read.

That one had me scratching my head. Looking at things a bit closer, sure. Reading? Ummm, no.

Growing up in El Paso, I used to power-fry fire ant colonies that would spring up in the cracks of the sidewalk and driveway with a magnifying glass. Glad I never set fire to the lawn, though. There’s no 12 year old kid growing up in Texas that doesn’t know what you can do with a magnifying glass, but I guess for all “Cayden” knows about the sun, he still wasn’t learned up on that “wind” stuff.

Exactly. Ants have been done in by young boys with magnifying glasses for 50 years or more probably.

Does anyone remember those revolvers that I believe were called pop-guns. They used to have rolls of these explosive strips that would pop when the hammer from the revolver smashed them.

We used to take these rolls and set them off one by one with a magnifying glass instead of the revolver.

I think young boys have been given several million magnifying glasses over the years and exactly two pages of comic books have been read using them.

^^^^^^
You mean caps? We got in trouble once for putting three rolls of caps in a vice and hitting the handle with a baseball bat. The kid's dad thought we blew up the garage. He was normally a laid back guy.

When I was 8 I had a GIANT real GLASS (not plastic lens) magnifying glass. I burned everything I could find with it, until one day I accidentally set afire the dry summer grass that made up the airfield final landing approach on a military air base where I lived. I can't imagine what those aviators were thinking when they flew over the field of fire to land, maybe they saw me running away or not. I watched from a distance the military fire department trucks coming to the field to manage the conflagration. I was burning beetles and sticks whatever, but only discovered the fire that encircled me when it was way out of hand to do anything about it. I'm glad my parents don't read the Sigforum because they don't know about it to this day. I turned 60 today and that memory and others growing up on that military base are great memories.

Anyway I thought setting a military airfield on fire rates somewhere between a 9 and 10.

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
Anyway I thought setting a military airfield on fire rates somewhere between a 9 and 10.

I don't know what official standards that should be rated by, but yeah, that ranks right up there! Wow!