Adventures in Self-Injury

After dinner tonight I tried using one of my landlady’s snuffer-things to put out the candles.

[Ed’s Note: His landlady likes to light candles when they have dinner together. There is nothing more to that story.]

After putting all four of them out, two were still smoking, with that little orange, glowing ember on the tip of the wick. I licked my finger, and squeezed the first one. Tsss. It went out. Moved on to the second. Phhht. Hm. The ember was mostly out, but there was still a tiny bit of light. I brought my finger back to my tongue to wet it for another attempt. What I failed to notice was that the bulk of the ember had broken off the wick on my first try, and was now stuck to my finger, still raging, raging against the dying of the light.

Ow.