Burn and Release

5/22/12

My beautiful purple blanket got stuck in the jam of my trunk the night before. The trunk would neither open nor close fully, so I turned the rear light off and decided to leave it for morning. In the morning, I went back to trying to figure it out. I had to sit in the rear end of the car, on top of bags of clothes and my blankets, while trying to come up with a solution. I considered cutting the piece from the blanket...but obviously that wouldn't work; the piece would still be stuck around the jam. So, without really thinking about it, I decided the only way was to burn the blanket out.

I had my water bottle close by, and wet the part of the blanket that was caught just to be safe. It took several matches, and several attempts at lighting the blanket down under the latch instead of letting it move up toward my hand, but it worked! The flame burned the corner that was caught and the trunk opened with a satisfying click.


I stayed with Krystine in Bend, Oregon the night I got my blanket caught. She lives in a cute two-bedroom house with her dog Quincy. She has frequent epileptic attacks, and told me not to freak out if she had one in the morning. She tends to fall asleep with the TV on so that her eyes are never completely in the dark, since total darkness can send her into an attack. It sounded scary, and also debilitating. She can't have a license because she never knows when it will happen, and most of her family lives only a few doors away. There wasn't a lot of food in her house since she eats often at work. There was a basket of plastic apples on the counter. On the table there were a few candles that she can't light because of the epilepsy. I wish I hadn't driven for 13 hours and could have talked to her more.