So, after Future Young Thinker of Tomorrow #1 brought a quarter cup of mercury to school and passed it around to all his friends, over 800 students got an extra two weeks tacked onto their Christmas vacation. Most of them, I’m sure, spent the time in the normal ways: playing Nintendo, surfing the web, and dealing blackjack down at Sharkey’s. But those pursuits weren’t intellectual enough for Future Young Thinkers of Tomorrow #2-5. They opted instead to spend their vacation engaged in the quintessentially American activity of siphoning gasoline from a 55-gallon drum. And, at some point during the process, Future Young Thinker of Tomorrow #2, as gasoline-soaked boys are wont to do, burst into flames. Police are unsure of how it happened, but I don’t think details are necessary in this case. If you get teenage boys and gasoline together in the same room, there is going to be a fire. It’s guaranteed. And if boys have come into contact with gasoline, and there is fire in the vicinity, you know the fire at some point will spread to the boy’s clothes. These are not huge leaps of logic. Here, let me do the math.

This reportedly happened down near Topaz Lake, on “a ranch”. If we remember back a couple of weeks, the offending quarter cup of mercury that has been making so much news lately was also found on “a ranch”, also down near Topaz Lake. This leave me with only two questions: where exactly is this mystery ranch, and why aren’t teenage boys lining up for miles around to get into it? Apparently there are plentiful amounts of mercury and gasoline, just lying around for the taking. Add in blackjack and a few hookers, and you’ve got a teenage boy Nirvana. Somebody should be charging admission to this place.
Anyway, Future Young Thinker of Tomorrow #2 was eventually rushed 20 miles to the emergency room. And by “rushed” I mean “leisurly driven by Future Young Thinker of Tomorrow #3’s mother, past the first emergency room they came across and on to the one located at the far side of town”. See, this is a fabulous display of thinking outside the box. This is why these boys in thirty years are all going to be CEOs of multinational corporations. They’ve got the ability to look at a problem from every angle and go against conventional wisdom to get the job done. Call 911? Don’t be silly. Get an ambulance? Why, when Mom has a car? And whatever you do, don’t settle for the first emergency room you see. You’ve got to explore all your options. That’s how you get straight to the top.
The urgent care center in Minden was unable to provide the proper environment for such a visionary, and the hospitals in Carson and Reno didn’t dare take him in. So after he was stabilized, a crack team of Shriners from a Sacramento burn clinic came and whisked him away. There he will remain while his third degree burns heal and his brain is presumably dissected for science. After all, who needs a brain when you’re that X-Treem!!