I read a very funny, yet scary, post over at Redhead Ranting called How Did We Survive? Jen takes a trip down memory lane, showing pictures of ways in which she and her brother should never have survived as children, given the absence of current day safety recommendations.

Check it out, if for no other reason than to see what a child’s car seat looked like in 1964. It’s simply medieval.

Her post reminded me of an at-home craft project my classmates and I were assigned in Catholic grade school.

A crucifix made out of burnt match sticks. Here is an example:

matchstick cross 

At the age of eight, we were told to take a box of thick match sticks, light them all afire and blow them out when the tips were charred just right.

Line them up neatly in the shape of a cross and glue them down.

I remember doing all of my match strikes outside, thanks to the one ounce of sense I had acquired by then.

My projects before this mostly involved gluing pebbles, elbow macaroni or cotton balls (and requisite pipe cleaners) to empty milk cartons and turning them into assorted sad-looking creations only a mother could love.

Never anything with fire. Fire kinda bad. It just occurred to me that perhaps we were supposed to get supervision. Oops.

Still, I can’t imagine any school today assigning such a project. And I can’t imagine boys being sent home with matches and told to “Go ahead, fire ’em up!” by a teacher.

What’s sad is I heard about someone through an acquaintance whose son burned down his house because he lit a cloud of hair spray on fire in the garage. Girls would never think to light hair spray on fire.

But we would build a small bonfire if it made Jesus happy.

Stumble it!