This is starting to get difficult

36. I used to play with matches when I was a kid. And I still like to watch things burn, though I'm not an arsonist. When I was younger, probably around 12 years old, my parents bought this huge case of matches. Rosette, or some brand. So I would sneak a few of the boxes and play with them on the back porch. My favorite thing to do was line them up in a row or in a circle, light one, and set it at the front and watch all the other matches burst into life. The flame would grow higher and higher as went down the line. If I'd set them in a circle, the two flames would travel opposite directions and meet on the other side and suddenly burn each other out. I would make small grassfires, always sure the hose was ready if it got out of hand. I would burn insects. I would leave breadcrumbs out for the ants to swarm around, then I'd set a match ablaze among them. It was really cruel and horrible some of the things I did. Once I took several boxes of matches and went on the small mountain near my house with my brother and a friend. It was summer and it had been hot and hadn't rained and a lot of the grass growing around the mountain was dead. We'd light a match, watch a patch of grass burn, and then we'd stamp it out. My brother and friend decided to be funny and started lighting matches very quickly and tossing them here and there. I would try to follow them and stamp out the fires before they became too much to handle. Well, they became to much to handle and we ended up burning quite a patch of grass and a few trees before the fire burn itself out. We were lucky the fire died before it could reach the house that wasn't too far away. Nobody ever knew who did it. It turned out not to be a big deal. But it could have been so much worse. I didn't play with fire much after that.

37. I am environmentally conscious. I'm not saying that everything I do is environmentally sound, but I think about it and see how I could have done better. I can see how eventually we're going to ruin everything we've got. But this is what I see happening, and it makes perfect sense. The degradation of our planet seems to coincide with the degradation of our society. Revelations speaks a lot about the end times. Are we living in the end times? People love to think that we are. But people have thought we were living in the end times not too long after Jesus ascended into heaven after the resurrection. Society just gets worse and worse. We can't even fathom what it will be like 100 years from now, just as 100 years ago, those people couldn't fathom how things are now. But I think the earth will have become so uninhabitable by the time Jesus comes back that after the tribulation and Armageddon, the destruction of the earth by fire will have become a mere formality. So am I encouraging people to go ahead and pollute all they want and not care so they can help fulfill prophecy? No! Because we still have to live in the here and now, and we should strive to make life as pleasant as possible.

38. When I was in the second grade, I really thought this high school girl was my girlfriend. I asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend, and she said yes. So what else was I to think. But when I saw her smooching on her real boyfriend, I got all mad and jealous. Then it became very obvious how childish I was. Gimme a break, I was like 8 years old.

39. I once thought that I could be a pitcher. I was in little league, and I'd begged and begged the coach to let me pitch. So he finally let me have a little tryout. After I nearly beaned him a couple of times, I gave up on the dream. I had no ball control whatsoever. I was a true wild thing.

40. I used to collect baseball cards. I don't know what happened to them. I think my middle brother still has them somewhere. I had a boxed set of some year or other and a bunch of cards that were worth a little bit even back then. I could have a small fortune by now if I looked up their value. But back then, all that money I spent buying the little packets, seemed like such a waste.