Eeeck, Eeeck, Eeeck

At 2 a.m. this morning we woke up to the horrific sounds of our fire alarm. Although, we are sleepy now, looking back you just have to laugh.

First, by pure instinct Chris gets up and starts pounding the smoke alarm presumably to the off button. Apparently, his first thought was I was cooking and somehow set off the alarm. In his defense, our smoke alarm goes off at the mere whiff of steam, so it is something we deal with during our waking hours.

Once I tell Chris it is not the smoke alarm and it’s the fire alarm, he instantly turns into serious Chris. He says something to the effect of, “OK. Make sure you are dressed to go outside, grab your things so we can immediately evacuate.” It was like a military order and carried such force, I actually did so (I actually checked very quickly the hall for smoke first) despite my slight inclination to just try and ignore the deafening sound and go back to sleep.

We evacuate along with many of our neighbors and unsafely just hang out in front of the building. There are a few smarter folk that cross the street and sit on that side, but it really just seemed like a lot of work.

Unceremoniously, the fire truck arrives a few minutes later. I am disappointed because I could have walked to the fire department and woken them up and gotten them to our building faster than whatever signal they got to respond. The fire department can’t be more than 500 yards away—we know because we hear them respond to many calls throughout the day.

Fortunately, there is no dramatic ending except for we all go back inside after the firemen turn off our alarm and try to go back to bed.