This summer seems to have seen a rise in the number of home fires blamed on a "boy playing with matches."

In the interest of full disclosure, I was a boy playing with matches for four years, ages 6-10, when I was living in northern Utah. My parents finally broke me after I burned down a hay barn.

They both were smokers - Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!. They brought me home from the police station, got out every matchbook and matchbox in the house, told me that since I liked to play with matches and watch fires burn, I could sit at the kitchen table and light every match, hold each one and watch it burn until it burned my fingers. I think it took a few hours, and I certainly never wanted to touch another match after that. I never took up smoking, either. I wonder why.

The most recent house fire blamed on a boy playing with matches caused more than $500,000 in damages and displaced five people.

I don't know if it's still true in today's world that boys will be boys, but in my mind I wasn't a normal boy and neither is any boy who plays with matches. There's something else going on, as there was with me with the lack of love and discipline in a family destroyed by alcohol.

All home owners should make sure that their homes have smoke alarms in each bedroom and any other areas where fires are common, such as in the rooms housing the water heater, furnace, and fireplace.

It is worthwhile to have a fire suppression system -- ceiling sprinklers -- installed if you are renovating your home, and if you have a fireplace, make sure the chimney has spark arrestors on it.

Lastly, though, and perhaps most importantly, keep an eye on your boys so they don't grow up to be the next California wildfire arsonist!

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