"Do you know why I pulled you over today?"
"Was I speeding?"
"No."
"Did I run the yellow light as it turned red?"
"Nope."
"No turn signal?"
"Not that."
"Was it the fact that I tossed a 3 foot ball of flame at the windscreen of your police cruiser?"
"Bingo!"
I love summers in Phoenix where the high is 115 and the low is 90 for 5 months out of the year. This relentless heat tends to weaken or destroy just about anything left outside or worse, left on the dash of your car. The heat will melt CD's, sunglasses or in this case a butane cigarette lighter.
I spent the day at my local haberdashery buying lace finery and pantaloons, (aka a glow in the dark Family Guy tee shirt). I left the store and got in my car that had been sitting in the sun for hours and lowered my windows to let out some of the heat. I moved slowly through the parking lot and decided to have a smoke... It's a horrible habbit that I don't recommend... But I smoke sometimes, so I tried to manage the steering wheel and the lighter at the same time.
As I slowed to make a left, I lit my cigarette. The cigarette now being lit, I released the button on the lighter.
Nothing. The flame continued...
I could hear a hiss as the flame grew bigger and bigger.
I took my finger of the button completely, and the flame grew higher. I was already turning left and couldn't stop in the middle of traffic, so I exercised the one option that I had... and threw the lighter out of the window.
Right towards a police cruiser.
On the bright side, the flaming lighter didn't actually hit the cruiser... it just errupted into a ball of flame 5 feet away from the officer's car.
After the explosion and a few hundred feet I pulled over to the right side of the road and looked in my rear view mirror in anticipation of the cruiser flipping around.
I was not disappointed.
The officer was oddly understanding and said he had witnessed lighters exploding in the heat before, although never so dramatically nor 5 feet away from his car.
The moral to the story is that one should not buy ones lighters from the dollar store. Oh yeah, and smoking is NOT cool.
Have you ever been pulled over by the police? Let us know in the comments!
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