Well, ok. Pretty sure Bernard Cooper wasn’t intending this. So let me just get on with it and say…uh, hold on, a monkey minion is trying to tell me something.

(A worker monkey approaches, on fire as it turns out, smoke billows from its back and blazes down its arms and legs. It hands me a paper with writing on it.)

Note: ‘Dude, I’m fucking on fire!’

Well I can see that boss, do you intend to do something about it? (Monkey holds up a finger and begins to scribble on a new note, miraculously, it doesn’t burst into flames.)

Note: ‘Not sure our health plan covers that one…’

True, it doesn’t. Blame Washington for that one bud.

(monkey goes screaming off into the distance, flailing its arms, other monkeys follow thinking that somehow, instead of panic, he has created a new dance.)

Well sorry about that interlude, apparently it sucks trying to find well educated help for the cheap here in the States, so I hired monkeys instead. What cha’ gonna do? So anywho…

Spontaneous Combustion, other than costing me a fine employee, is also the title of a short little essay from Bernard Cooper’s ‘Maps to Anywhere’ which is an essay anthology. This was one of the few that stood out. Why you may ask? let me tell you by telling you a story. (Monkey sitting across from me sighs and rolls its eyes.)

When I was younger, (The monkey growls and gets up and leaves…) I remember vividly having a fire drill at our elementary school where the local Fire Chief showed up and did something similar to our class. I don’t think he necessarily intended to, but then again maybe, but he scared the hell out of us. We were petrified about being trapped in a burning building and needless to say when I got home I was panicked when my Mom started cooking. Well, truth be told I still am just don’t tell her that. A similar event occurred a year later only this time involving a tornado drill and then lengthy but cool explanation of tornado damage. This has instilled in me a life long fascination with dangerous weather and tornadoes in particular, oddly enough this was not squelched by the awful film twister from the 90’s. If you love that film I apologize, I don’t care for it.

Fear of fire is a basic human trait brought upon, usefully, by evolution. I think you can make a good case that the birth of true human civilization was not possible until humans conquered their fear of fire just enough to learn how to harness it. Without being able to control the input and output of energy, society as we know it would simply have been not possible. Unless of course you’re this guy: No offense Mr. Tsoukalos, I actually do watch the show. But since you’re not this guy, then you don’t believe that the story of Prometheus was really about the Annunaki teaching early man how to harness fire. Mr. Cooper isn’t either.

Mr. Cooper, I think, is using his own experiences as a child to showcase the fear and trauma that fire can hold for everyone. Once the fear sets in, it never leaves. The final scene of jumping into cerulean blue is an image of iciness and the calmness of cold that is one of the few things that stills the reptilian hind brains fear of fire. It’s a neat little essay, one I think that he drew from personal experience. It made me remember my own so I suppose it did its job.