“Mandrake!” I shouted. “Leave those matches alone. You could burn down America!”
My twelve-year-old nephew looked at the box, then at me, and asked, “America?”
Me: “Yes, America! That’s how these things start.”
He nodded thoughtfully, the way scientists do just before ruining someone’s favorite theory.
Mandrake: “Uncle Jaron… America has nearly twenty thousand cities and towns.”
Me: “That’s exactly why I’m worried.”
Mandrake: “Even in one of the worst wildfire years, far less than one percent of them are largely destroyed.”
Me: “Young man, do not interrupt a perfectly good lecture with mathematics.”
He ignored me.
Mandrake: “The Great Fire of London destroyed about eighty percent of the city.”
Me: “Well… that was before fire departments discovered water.”
Mandrake: “Not really.”
Mandrake: “In 1812, Moscow lost roughly three-quarters of its buildings.”
Me: “Different century.”
Mandrake: “In 1871, Chicago lost more than seventeen thousand buildings. One-third of the city’s population became homeless.”
Me: “I still blame the cow.”
Mandrake: “Historians mostly don’t.”
That hurt.
He wasn’t even breathing hard.
Mandrake: “That same week, the Peshtigo Fire burned more than a million acres, erased entire towns, and killed between twelve hundred and twenty-five hundred people. It’s still America’s deadliest wildfire.”
I quietly slid the matches a little farther away from him. He noticed.
Mandrake: “And after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the fires destroyed about eighty percent of the city.”
I frowned.
Me: “You’re making it awfully difficult to terrify you.”
Mandrake: “I’m just trying to keep the statistics alive.”
I wasn’t prepared for statistics to fight back.
Me: “So, you’re saying you couldn’t burn down America with one little book of matches?”
Mandrake considered the question as though calculating rocket trajectories.
Mandrake: “Not unless America was unusually dry.”
I sighed with relief.
Then he added—
Mandrake: “…and remarkably cooperative.”
I confiscated the matches.
Just to be safe.
As we walked back toward the house, I asked, “So why does it always feel as if the whole world is burning?”
Mandrake smiled.
Mandrake: “Because every fire has a thousand cameras.”
He pointed toward my phone.
Mandrake: “The Great Fire of London had no helicopters. The Chicago Fire had no twenty-four-hour news channels. Peshtigo had no drones. San Francisco had no people posting, ‘OMG!!! 🔥🔥🔥’ every eleven seconds.”
I had to admit he had a point. If London had possessed smartphones in 1666, people in Australia would have been convinced England had completely disappeared before breakfast.
Perhaps human beings haven’t become better at starting fires.
We’ve simply become astonishingly good at broadcasting them.
I slipped the matches into my pocket.
Then, just to be on the safe side…
…I confiscated Mandrake’s magnifying glass.
He looked offended.
Mandrake: “Uncle Jaron…”
Me: “Don’t argue with experience.”
Mandrake: “Have you ever started a fire with a magnifying glass?”
I thought about it.
Me: “Not intentionally.”
He smiled.
Mandrake: “I rest my case.”
