Now in my mind, "Cranking it up a notch" involves fire.

Let me start off by saying that I'm not the smartest man on the planet. I probably didn't have to tell you this to realize that fact, but I did something this past Friday night at a friend's party in Connecticut that 100% solidifies that I may have an extra chromosome.

(Or one less, I always forget which scenario causes Down Syndrome, probably because I have it.)

Anyway, I'm at this party and I've been playing beer pong for about 4 hours because no one can beat me. This is normally the case, someone might get lucky once in a while or I might have an off day, but I must say, I'm spectacular at this game.

So, it's about 3 in the morning and I'm still going strong, so I start to get a little bored (and overly intoxicated mind you), so I make the call...I say to my partner, "Let's crank this game up a notch".

Now in my mind, "Cranking it up a notch" involves fire.

So my bright idea is to light the ping pong ball aflame, and play with it that way.

Well, if you can't see where I'm going with this, you should watch more movies. I spray the ball with OFF bugspray to coat it with flammable liquid, break out the lighter and light the ball on fire...along with my entire left hand.

Instead of the old "stop-drop-and-roll routine, I applied a different fire prevention method...here's the sequence of events that followed:

1.) Drop ball
2.) Shake hand violently
3.) Scream like a virgin because the fire is still burning
4.) Slap hand around like a misbehaving two year old's ass
5.) Apply cold water

For the remainder of the night my hand, as Ralph Wiggum would put it, " felt like burning".


When I woke up the next morning, my ring finger had two blisters on it and none of my fingers contained that patch of hair between the knuckle and middle joint.

As I'm typing this, my ring finger is wrapped in a bandage and there's no feeling on the tip of it. So if there's any message here for the kids, it's this one: "Play with fire...IT'S EXTREME!!"