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10 Things: Wooden Matches, with special instructions
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 9:00AM Normally, with these 10 Things exercises, I give you a prompt and encourage you to write down the first 10 Things you think of. I also share mine. Let’s not do Normally today, ok? Today, I want you to think about Wooden Matches. I want you to think about the way to strike a wooden match, the way the match looks and smells while it’s burning and when it’s out. I want you to think about the way the burnt wood crumbles away and leaves a bit of soot on your fingers. Close your eyes for a moment and think about times you have used wooden matches. Can you make a list of 10 times you’ve struck a wooden match? Two? Three? Can you think of times you’ve struck a wooden match and tell me why you lit the match, where you were? Were they strike anywheres? Can you remember what you did with the matchstick when you were finished? Did you, by any chance, put the Struck Matches in your pocket?
Give it a shot. 10 times you’ve struck a wooden match. I’ll share my 10 in the comments a little later, in between the ins and outs of my day. If you get stuck, go read the poem “Antilamentations” by Dorianne Laux, posted on The Writer’s Almanac on Monday March 7, 2011. That’s the poem we can thank for today’s pondering.
10 Things, Struck Matches, Writing in Words 
Reader Comments (5)
1. I keep wooden matches in the kitchen. I don't smoke or have a gas-fired stove. We hardly every use the barbecue grill. So why do I even have the matches in there? Ah, of course. Birthday candles. We use them to light the candles on birthday cakes, fives sets of candles every year for at least the last ten years. Did we use birthday candles before we had kids? I don't think so. We strike the match, light the candles, shake out the match flame, and drop it on the plate, sing the song (hoping that wax doesn't pool on the icing too much, hoping that no one singes their hair). When all is said and done, the matchsticks must go in the compost pile or the trash. I can't even remember.
2. Before we replaced our natural gas-powered furnace a couple of years ago, we used our kitchen matches to light the pilot each year for the few weeks that we needed supplemental heat. I can recall opening the front of the furnace, setting the dial, striking the match on the face of the furnace and awkwardly trying to reach the short match into the tiny space to ignite the pilot. The spent matches (because it always took me two or three tries) often were left on top of the furnace, sometimes for a couple of years, undisturbed and gathering dust there in the heating closet. Now the furnace doesn't need us or our matches. It has an electronic ignition. Kapow.
3. During a thunderstorm. After a crash of thunder. In the dark. I struck a match to light a candle in the center of the table. What happened to the matchstick that flared in the dark? I have no idea.
4. Tightly rolled tube of newspaper, struck match lighting the end. The rapidly burning paper used to light a wad of paper stuffed under kindling in the fireplace. The spent match tossed onto the burgeoning flames.
5. A match struck to light candles on the dinner table. The matches left on the waxy base of the candlestick holder.
6. A melancholy day. A match to light a candle smelling of carrot cake (spicy!) then left on the edge of the stove.
7. (From Partner's childhood) Matches were so important that they had specific and frequently ornate holders in various parts of the house. Metal, with curlicues, that held a whole box of wooden matches and might have had a strike plate. In particular he remembers the match holder on the old back porch, whose matches were used to light the open-flame gas heater that would burn your pajamas if you got too close.
8. (Another from Partner) He was a pot-bellied stove in an elementary school production of The Little Match Girl. I told him I'd never seen the play. "She dies." Thanks for that.
9. Partner (in answer to Why we have Wooden Matches in our kitchen?): Because we like them.
10. As I pondered this post, I took the box of matches from the kitchen cupboard, along with a small plate. I lit ten matches. One, I blew out immediately. Others I tried to hold as long as possible, timing until my fingers felt hot. The duration of the match flame was widely variable. Many matches went out in a few seconds even without breeze and with me trying to keep the flame going by adjusting the angle of the match. The three that stayed lit past halfway burned for about one minute each. I left each match on the small plate until this morning. I swept them into the compost bucket, imagining them decomposing like the sticks and leaves from the yard. A tiny scorch mark was left along one edge of the plate, a halo of the match tip that was still too hot when I dropped it.
1. My boyfriend has to light his water heater with a match. The water heater is in his kitchen, and I usually sit at my spot at the table, drinking tea, watching him and waiting for him to start cooking dinner. "I think I'd be afraid to stick my hand in there with a lit match everyday." "It's not too bad," he says, "I'll teach you."
2. I like fire. I like watching the flames and the power of being able to create them. Once my friend went to take a shower and I was left standing in her kitchen -- probably drinking something or talking to her cat. While I waited, I saw some matches and some q-tips. I decided to make a q-tip teepee and light it on fire. I did.
3. When I was younger I liked to collect empty matchboxes and play with them. Sometimes I would fold up tissue paper and pretend the matchbox was a tiny bed and the tissue paper was a set of tiny sheets. I would imagine that the coziest, snuggest, most satisfying place to sleep would be in a matchbox. I still sort of think that.
4. Matchboxes in Ukraine have pictures of Cossacks on them -- you can tell they are Cossacks by the long, wavy mustaches. We were sitting on a train and my friend saw an empty Cossack matchbox: "Can I have that? It's for my scrapbook." She folded it up and placed it inside her purse.
5. I am not very good at lighting matches. Sometimes I hold them too close to the red part, but then I am afraid of burning myself. Sometimes I hold them too far away, but then they snap in half.
6. I think the last time I smoked a cigarette, someone lit it with a match. I smoke more often here, so the "last time" might have been yesterday.
7. Remembering how we used to shoot fireworks on the Fourth makes me both nostalgic and tense. Dad was always so worried that someone would get burned, or lose a finger, or shot in the eye. I would be in such a rush to run away from the bottle rocket (or whatever it was), that my hand holding the match would shake, and it would take longer for the wick to catch.
8. When I would younger, I didn't understand why we had birthday candles at all. "Why don't we just stick the matches into the cake? Why do we need to light them, then use them to light something else?" I didn't notice, at the time, how quickly matches burn, how they wouldn't leave any time for birthday songs or wishes. I was in too much of a hurry to eat.
9. I was visiting someone's apartment over New Year's, and we had to light the gas stove with match. We did this any number of times a day. To warm up water for tea or a bath, to cook food. He went through so many matches. After they were out, he through them into a small tin can. I don't know why he saved them.
10. The Russian word for "matches" and the Russian word for "paper clips" sound very similar.