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Once upon a time there was a resourceful organization which received government support for providing asbestos gloves to people who lit fires. Even though most of those who asked for gloves were adults, curious children occasionally played with fire, imitating their elders, in spite of the fact that their parents had taught them the dangers and had forbidden them to indulge until they were more mature.

Those who provided the asbestos gloves decided that because children "were going to do it anyway," they would provide a community service by providing children with gloves and teaching them standard methods of building fires. This plan was also intended to increase dramatically the amount of government funding enjoyed by the organization.

And so they developed an arson education program for all schools, called "Fire is Fun." It taught even kindergarteners these things:

1. Everyone is fascinated with flames; they're a real turn-on.
2. You shouldn't feel guilty about playing with fire.
3. You needn't tell your parents that you are buring things; they wouldn't understand.
4. We will provide you with asbestos gloves so that you can start or continue playing with fire without getting burned.
5. We will teach you the many alternate ways of playing with fire, such as using matches, fireworks, or gasoline so you can choose the method best for you.
6. If you should make a mistake and set your house on fire, we'll give you a hatchet and help you demolish the rest.
7. We'll counsel you afterward on how best to continue playing with fire so that you won't get caught again.

After teaching this in most schools and after convincing film makers and TV producers to feature uncontrollable fires and arsonists in programming, half the children in the country became active pyromaniacs. Because they played with fire, none of them knew how to use it properly, and a quarter of a million of them annually were badly burned.

The taxpayers exhorted by the "social planners" through the media to believe that burning by children was natural and inevitable, paid billions annually to repair and heal the damage done but found that, even so, the scars lasted a lifetime.

Heart Beat Magazine printed this article in its Summer 1981 issue.