When Mormon Kids Play With Matches

My “friends” danced naked, started fires, and asked if I believed in God

Eventually, every child meets someone who encourages them to break the law. In my case, it was a spunky blond Mormon kid named Gasoline Matty.

The legend of Gasoline Matty grew after he set alight the grass field behind my house in Idaho Falls, Idaho, when I was seven years old.

It was all done with matches, not gasoline, but he and a bunch of other kids, including me, still got into a lot of trouble — first for playing with fire, and second for lying to our parents about it.

Up until then, the most trouble I’d been in was when, at three years old, I’d snuck a lollipop from the kitchen counter and was caught due to the blue residue around my lips.

That night, my parents welcomed me into their bed and gave me an instructional talk on why lying was wrong. Daddy illustrated his message with a sock puppet.

The whole experience was mortifying. My innards squirmed, my cheeks burned, and worst of all, a gap opened between me and my parents when we three were supposed to be one. I was hardwired to follow rules.

When I was small, I was a solitary creature and completely relied on my parents for my emotional needs. Heck, I’m 37 and that sentence still describes me.

My isolation changed, however, around 1991, when Daddy got a job at Idaho National Labs. He would work there as a nuclear physicist helping to dismantle the old Soviet rocket program.

We packed up our bags and found a little yellow and white house on a quaint residential street in Idaho Falls.

Lennox Street had three major attractions: a Mormon temple at the far end; a large field and irrigation canal right behind our house; and an enormous pack of neighborhood kids who were intensely curious about me.

“You’re not Mormon?” said my across-the-street neighbor, Chelsea, who was the same age as me. “I’ll have to ask my parents if I can play with you.”

After some argument between her parents and mine, we were allowed to spend as much time together as we wanted, and became official “best friends.”

My secondary friends were Courtney and her little brother Michael, who lived a couple houses down from me. For reasons I never understood, Chelsea and Courtney could be at each other’s throats like spitfires before changing tack in an instant and gaily playing together for hours.

Little Michael once took it upon himself to give me a naked penis dance in Courtney’s bedroom. He happily twirled his boyhood to music only he could hear playing in his head as I looked on, a bit too fascinated. I’d never seen a naked boy before.

Once Michael pulled up his trousers, he told me it was my turn. When I refused, Courtney and Michael both said that I had to show Michael my nude body since he had shown me his. I argued that I hadn’t asked to see him dance.

Courtney and Michael called me a liar and a hypocrite. Then Michael marched me to the bathroom, where some of his mother’s menstrual fluid was still sitting in the toilet bowl, unflushed.

He threatened: “If you don’t dance naked for me, my mom won’t be able to have her period again!”

I left the house soon afterward. From then on, I felt uneasy around Courtney and Michael. Yet I stayed their friend for the rest of the time I lived in Idaho Falls.

After the “angel incident,” my choices for companions were slim.

When I first moved to Lennox Street, the neighborhood kids embraced me. We’d jump rope in front of my house, draw with chalk on the sidewalk, and play kick the can in the street as the sun set — yes, that was still a thing.

Girls came to my room to play with my Barbies. I wanted to put on conversations and maybe have some Barbie fights and a marriage here and there, but one of the girls wanted us to take off their clothes and make them have sex.

She talked about sex, too. We were only in first grade and it distressed me.

Her chatter reminded me of my recent discovery of a strange piece of plastic on the road. When I picked it up and took it to my parents, they said it was a condom used for sex.

“Do you know about sex?” asked Mommy.

“Yes,” I said quickly.

I kind of did. All I knew for sure was that it was something I didn’t wish to discuss.

One day, one of my neighborhood friends — not the girl who initiated Barbie sex — came up to me on the sidewalk and told me that her grandpa had seen an angel.

“What do you mean?” To my atheist self, saying that someone had seen an angel was like telling the first line of a knock-knock joke.

“My grandpa saw a little girl who died,” she said, her words tumbling out like she was gossiping about a kid at school. “He was asleep, and he saw her playing in a field, dressed all in white. She had white angel wings and was so peaceful and pure.”

I snorted. “That didn’t happen.”

She stared back at me. “Yes, it did!”

“Angels aren’t real!”

“My grandpa saw one!” she insisted.

Our exchange was getting more and more heated. “You said he was asleep. He must have been dreaming.”

Her cheeks blazed. “Do you believe in God?”

“No,” I said.

The fallout from my declaration was nuclear.

All my friends dropped me, except my best friend Chelsea, Courtney, and pervy little Michael. Some kids made the choice on their own, following the flow of public opinion. Everyone else’s parents forbade them to play with me.

Even my favorite babysitter, Kacey, declared that she would never look after me again!

It was hardly fair to punish a first grader for her existential beliefs. I doubted anyone was going to hell for hanging out with me. For weeks, I burned with anger and indignation.

As spring ticked into summer and my three friends went on vacation, I became as isolated as I had been before we moved to Idaho Falls. Any social gathering appealed to me.

Fwoosh. Hiss. Matty struck the match and a tiny flame ignited. Around him, the neighborhood kids breathed in its fascination and danger. My stomach churned, sweat stung my forehead, and I wanted to go home. But the mad tribal thrill of standing in this wilderness with my peers, unsupervised by our parents, kept me pinned to the ground.

“Look at this.” Some of the boys were building nests in the grass, setting the grass on fire, then snuffing out the sparks with their shoes.

“No, watch this!” A different boy grabbed a bigger clump of grass and produced a flame almost as tall as his knee.

The girl who liked Barbie sex giggled. “Stop that, we’ll get in trouble!”

I giggled, too. The mob mind had erased all trace of my rational self.

Matty snatched back his box of matches, never to be outdone. “Check this out.”

He lit a line of fires, the skin of his thumb rasping against the matchbox as he struck it again, again, and again.

“F**k!” cried one of the boys.

I flinched because I recognized the word as one of the “bad” ones spray-painted on the concrete sides of the canal. My mom had explained that I should never say them out loud.

Kids shrieked. Some kicked dirt with their shoes, but Matty had started too many fires. The blaze was spreading into the grass field and the reeds along the canal.

I think a few brave boys stayed behind to try to put it out, but the rest of us ran.

I watched from my bedroom window, expecting the whole field to go up in flame. But nothing came of it, although a few emergency vehicles did flash up the path along the canal.

At supper, my parents fixed their eyes on me. “Some kids were caught with matches in the field today,” said Daddy. “Do you know anything about that?”

“No.” My skin crawled. I hated to lie to them, but even more, I couldn’t bear to get in trouble.

“Are you sure?” said Mommy. “The kids with the matches were your friends.”

The agony! My insides writhed like I’d swallowed an eel.

“I wasn’t with them,” I said.

The final statement from a girl who never lied. Of course they’d believe me.

“Well, people saw you there, Erie,” Daddy said.

S**t. Another spray-painted word from the canal that I couldn’t say out loud.

“I’m sorry!” I whimpered. “I didn’t touch the matches. I was just watching.”

“Playing with fire is extremely dangerous,” said Mommy. “I don’t care if you were only watching. Just being there put your life at risk. Understand?”

My quivering innards understood perfectly. The trouble I was in felt even worse than the sock puppet lecture of 1988. I was never going to lie ever again.