Nobody's Fireproof

It's a universal truth that if you play with fire, then you might just get burned.

It's also a universal truth that some people have the misguided belief that they're fireproof, and so not so much tiptoe as tango through the raging infernos of chance, oblivious to the fact that they're so very often just seconds from catching fire, moments from the inevitable crash and burn.

The subject of today's lesson most likely had this misguided belief that he and his beautiful fiance, the woman of his dreams, without whom nothing else mattered, as he so tragically and accurately proclaimed, could dance through the flames like asbestos ballerinas.

But he was wrong.

She got burned, metaphorically and physically, and shuffled off her young, mortal coil in a scalding bath, while he slept off his narcotic dalliances in the bedroom.

They played with fire, she got burned, he got branded with the guilt of having taken her hand and leading her onto this particular burning dance floor.

Without her nothing else mattered, he had said, and in the end he was right.

Thirteen weeks of guilt rest awfully heavy on a man's shoulders, and in the end he fulfilled his prophecy. End of the line.

Nobody's fireproof. Nobody.