When I was a boy....

...we had a cottage on a lake in the country.  It was a rural resort community.  I spent all the summers of my youth on or about the water.  I can smell the lake right now, in my minds eye. Water, blue-green algae, two stroke oil and gasoline.

There was no trash pick up there, so dad used to burn some of the things he didn't feel like hauling all the way back to the city to dispose of, like the newspapers that he used to line the cat's litter box. (Smells a little like cigarettes when it burns, but less repulsive.)

Anyhow, he used an old 55 gallon drum as a burning barrel.  Those things were everywhere in those days.  People used them to float their docks.  They'd spring a leak and sink, becoming a nesting area for fish, or sometimes just be floating around the lake half full of water.  A hazard to swimmers and boaters alike. 

That barrel used to get really hot.  I was five or six or so.  I would wonder; 'How would it feel to touch that thing?'  One day, my curiosity got the better of me.  I could resist temptation no longer and I put both of my hands on it.

To date, this was not one of my better ideas.  I didn't get burned too bad.  Blisters on my fingers, they're all still intact.  No one bothered to ask me why I'd done it.

For years thereafter, I had to resist that temptation to burn myself just to feel what it was like. I got over it, and found healthier ways to make the endorphins flow.  Am I therefore a masochist?  I suppose by some definitions yes, but I've never really liked labels as such.

So, what made me think of this was that I've read some posts about branding of late.  I like the idea. As a symbol of ownership, love and devotion, done by someone I want to belong to.